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Re: Net-tools followup



On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 11:12:37AM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Needless to say this is *EXTREMELY* stupid behaviour of ifconfig
> > and completely breaks your system.
> 
> Okay, for those of you who have iproute installed, you can still get things
> up and running using the ip tool. Like this:
> 
> ip addr add 127.0.0.1 dev lo
> ip link set lo up
> ip route add 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo
> ip addr 10.66.2.150 dev eth0
> ip link set eth0 up
> ip route add 0.0.0.0/0 dev eth0 metric 1
> 
> Change eth0 IP and default route as needed of course.

This was hilarious.  I had shut down my laptop this morning after reading,
but not entirely absorbing, the above.  This evening when I booted it, I
of course could not bring up eth0, which is a Proxim Symphony PCMCIA card.
Since I couldn't bring up networking, I couldn't get to this email, which
I had read by ssh'ing to my workstation.  I have only the current **bad**
net-tools .deb in my /var/cache/apt/archives, of course, so there is no 
hope of restoring the last good one quickly.

OK, no problem, I go to my workstation, which I had also upgraded with the
bad net-tools and had also shut down (we have a power crisis here in
California).  However, I don't often apt-get autoclean my workstation, so
I quickly dpkp --install the old good net-tools and I'm back in business 
there.  I find and read the above email, but soon discover that I don't have
iproute on my laptop.  OK, says I, I'll just install net-tools from the 
Potato CD-ROMS, which leads me into rediscovering apt-cdrom and various
stuff.  Guess what?  net-tools didn't exist in Potato.   OK, then I'll
install iproute from Potato and use the above workaround.  After some 
futzing that's accomplished, but when I do the first ip addr add, I 
learn that:

	"Cannot open netlink socket: Address family not supported by
	 protocol".

Needless to say, the route add doesn't work either.

OK, says I, I'll just copy the good old version 1.57 net-tools .deb
over by sneakernet.  Hmmm, I've been messing with Linux since RedHat
5.1 and Debian for over a year now, and I've never used a floppy 
except for boot and rescue discs.  So I pull down "Learning Debian
GNU/Linux" and read up on using floppies.  I'm startled to discover
that boot discs are formatted msdos, but, sure, now that I know it
that makes sense.  So I mount an old RedHat boot disc, delete all
the files on it and copy over the .deb.  When I cd /floppy and ls, 
I see that the filename is truncated, mutter under my breath, but oh
well, I'll copy it to my laptop harddrive and rename it, so who cares?

So I carry the floppy over to the laptop, do
  mount -t /dev/fd0 /floppy
and am greeted with:
  mount: fs type msdos not supported by kernel 

Oh f**k, I remember that when I compiled my kernel, I said to myself
"Why on earth would I want msdos support on this laptop?  Not only, 
NO, but Hell NO!"

OK, so I'll format the floppy ext2.  The book says to 
  fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
but my system informs me that fdformat is obsolete and no longer
available and that I should use superformat instead.  The man page
for superformat implies that I am going to get an msdos filesystem
on the floppy whether I want it or not.

So, "apropos floppy", et voila kfloppy.  And sure enough kfloppy
is a nice, straightforward little program that formats floppy
discs and makes ext2 one of the options.  I format the disc
and copy the net-tools .deb and check it with an ls -al and a
df and all is good.  I pop it out, take it to the laptop, mount
it, cd /floppy and ls.  Hmmm, the only thing there is lost and found.
WTF?  OK, back to the workstation.  When I put the diskette in,
it immediately starts bitching at me, and I now remember that 
one must dismount a floppy before one removes it.  So I format it
again with kfloppy, cp the .deb, umount /floppy, and then pop it
out.  Back to the laptop, mount it, cp the .deb, dpkg --install 
the good net-tools package, ifup eth0, and I'm sending this to you
from the laptop.

Well, I thought it was funny...



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