Re: No ifconfig [Was: no /etc/inittab]

[Glenn English <ghe2001@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 3:23 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> wrote:

> Because ip is a pain in the ass to make it run, and still gives grossly
> incomplete information?
>
> In 2 years, I have yet to get a full network report out of ip such as
> ifconfig gives.

How about fixing ip? Like 'ip --config'? Or just 'ip -h'?

I've written many scripts over the years, using ifconfig and others,
and having everything broken now is a major PITA.

I very much agree that sysV init and those old commands were a mess,
especially with the introduction of ipv6. But I'd have more inclined
to fix what was there than to replace it with commands that return
gibberish and kill so many scripts so many people have written.

One of the benefits, to me anyway, of Debian, Linux, and GNU was that
things were very often designed to output text, for the benefit of
humans. For the benefit of computers, that info could easily be parsed
by other commands.

--
Glenn English