On Wed, 2016-12-28 at 03:08 +0000, Wookey wrote:
> If we are supposed to change to something newer these days
We've been discussing doing that for 8 years now:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/03/msg00780.html
> a pointer to a 'conversion' document would be nice.
https://wiki.debian.org/NetToolsDeprecation
(There are links on that page).
It's not a changeover document, but as I said earlier my favourite
resource is: http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/
> Like Andrew I don't like the tone of these 'get rid of this crap'
> messages.
The issue is ifconfig was the tool up until Linux 2.2, but then the
kernel developers favoured iproute2. The kernel has moved on and they
maintained iproute2, but ifconfig has remained static. It now doesn't
support the most mundane things like multiple IP addresses per
interface, let alone multi routing takes, routing rules and the various
tunnelling protocols, or virtual ethernet devices needed by containers
to name but a few.
I don't know whether "crap" is the right word, but it is certainly
baggage from a bygone era. "Baggage" here means that if we are nice to
our users (ie, Debian sysadmins), we should not force them to know two
tools. We only have one complete tool set available: iproute2. This means at the very least ifconfg can not appear in any conffile, nor can it really appear in documented shell scripts like dhclient-script.
Unfortunately this pain does not end at ifconfig. iwconfig has suffered
the same fate. If you want to use Linux wireless in anger, then that's
the tool you have to use. It's doubly annoying because of the "Do NOT
screenscrape this tool, we don't consider its output stable" warning it
issues. It's not like you have much of a choice any more.Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part