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Re: Introductory iproute2 documentation (Was Re: ifconfig network resolution)



On 06/13/2017 07:29 AM, Andy Smith wrote:
Hi Richard,

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 05:11:47AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
Can you recommend a good introduction to iproute2 which ignores the
existence of net-tools (start newbies with good habits)?

Unfortunately I don't think I actually can. Being someone who
started off with the net-tools commands (and frankly, still having
to force myself to reach for the newer iproute2 ones) I've never
really gone looking for iproute2 tutorials. More "how do I do this
net-tools thing in iproute2?".

Anyway, the best I've found is this:

    http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/

but some of the more advanced examples here suffer from the problem
of explaining how to do a thing without actually explaining what that
thing is or why one might want to do it.

Here's a page I sometimes refer to when trying to work out what teh
iproute2 equivalent is:

    https://dougvitale.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/deprecated-linux-networking-commands-and-their-replacements/

That's about the best I can do I'm afraid. Perhaps others have
better links.

I find man pages a poor fit for what I'm looking for.

Yes, the man pages for the iproute2 tools are notoriously awful,
looking as they do like the output of some sort of automated tool
rather than actual documentation.

The topic of "documentation is hard" is one that this list has
been over and over quite a few times recently. [snip]


My problem is not with the iproute2 man page specifically.
I find "man pages" generally unsuitable to task as they are generally written by *AND* for experts. They must be adequate to that task as they have not been replaced by something else.

For sometime I've been mulling over a possible "form" of a solution. It stems from encountering the concept of "shadow screens" used in early FORTH implementations.

What my current mental image might be described as a amalgam of a wiki and a blog. The user would go to the website and enter the command's name.

The first thing displayed would be the content of a a standard man page.
There would be a set of selection buttons to move among "man page"/examples/tutorial. I envision highlighting a keyword on one page would lead to the appropriate section when a different page was selected.

YMMV
Comments?
TIA


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