Re: Can we kill net-tools, please?
On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Tom H <tomh0665@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Toni Mueller <toni@debian.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 09:01:51PM +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
>>> On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 10:30:26AM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>
>
>>>> Ifconfig has been deprecated; you should probably use "ip a show
>>>> dev lo" instad of the shorter and more convenient "ifconfig lo"
>>>
>>> ... and often wrong
>>
>> The BSD ifconfig can do this with ease, and since ages, too. Why is
>> the Linux ifconfig _so_ different? Forking for the sake of it?
>
> Is there any relationship between current ifconfig on Linux and the
> BSDs, other than the name? I don't think so. The BSDs have continued
> to develop ifconfig, adding many features and options.
Right, but this raises all kinds of questions like "Is it possible to
improve the ifconfig on Linux to catch up with the BSD version? And
even with ip?". Networking standards and protocols are
platform-independent, maintaining a Unix-wide interface to do the
basic networking stuff sounds like a reasonable thing to do. At this
time ifconfig seems to be the answer, no ip is visible on the BSDs
horizon.
I realize that net-tools version is long gone, but what about the GNU
inetutils one? It's supported and is not Linux-specific. Maybe a new
default implementation of ifconfig should be provided rather than
simply discarding one from a basic install. Another question is
whether you absolutely have to switch to netlink to have a reasonable
ifconfig implementation or ioctl is still acceptable (I don't know).
Alexey
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