On Tue, 15 Aug 2017, Felix Miata wrote: > >> > Please ellaborate. Why should ifconfig be part of the base system?
Indeed. It shouldn't, and it doesn't anymore. Maybe net-tools should be part of the *standard* system, but it certainly does not belong to the *base* system anymore. *base* is "what is required for packages to be installed and upgraded"... > >> is not anything which needs to be added - we just need busybodies to > >> refrain from taking it out. https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#iproute2 It is broken in that it just *can't* handle the Linux networking stack except for the bare minimum functionality on IPv4 (no, it doesn't meet even the bare minimum for IPv6), and the only reason we had to keep it around by default (consistent output that some scripts scrapped) was broken by GNU upstream when it took ifconfig out of the bit-rot pit hell and started maintaining it again. So, it [somewhat recently] broke scripts that scrapped its output, and it will give you incomplete/incorrect information because it can't handle lots of details of the Linux networking stack... > Interesting man page difference: > > Stretch: > Ifconfig is used to configure the kernel-resident network > interfaces. It is used at boot time to set up interfaces as > necessary. After that, it is usually only needed when debug- > ging or when system tuning is needed. > > If no arguments are given, ifconfig displays the status of the > currently active interfaces. If a single interface argument is > given, it displays the status of the given interface only; if a > single -a argument is given, it displays the status of all > interfaces, even those that are down. Otherwise, it configures > an interface. Which is outdated... In Debian, it is *not* used to configure anything at boot time: not with systemd, and not with sysvinit+initscripts. And if any Debian package wants/needs it, it has to depend on net-tools. > WARNING: Ifconfig is obsolete on system with Linux kernel newer > than 2.0. On this system you should use ip. See the ip manual > page for details We should add that paragraph, yes, and remove the "boot time" stuff :-) -- Henrique Holschuh
