Package: debian-reference Version: 2.46 Severity: normal Hello Osamu,
In your very excellent manual here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch05.en.html#_the_network_interface_with_the_static_ip The examples for setting up static address assignments include a 'broadcast' statement in addition to the 'netmask' statement. The example is great but could be improved by removing the broadcast statement since it can be calculated from the netmask. In the example you include the following: allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.11.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.11.255 gateway 192.168.11.1 dns-domain lan dns-nameservers 192.168.11.1 1. I see that you have included the broadcast address statement in addition to the netmask statement. I used to do that too because the ifupdown examples included the broadcast statement. Since ifupdown's examples had them I used them. But needing to manually calculate the broadcast address was always a drudgery. But if the tool needed it then I was going to do it. I thought the tool needed it because it was provided in the examples. But it has come to my attention that these are not needed. It was only an example. I had been calculating the broadcast address manually all along and it is not needed. Reference this bug report for ifupdown where the broadcast statements have been removed from the examples included with ifupdown. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=630551 For this reason I think it would improve the documentation if the broadcast statements were removed from the examples in the Debian Reference too. 2. The example domain used is "lan". That is a perfectly fine local private domain name. But I am not sure it is illustrative of the general case very well. I feel more uncertain proposing this. But would "example.com" be a better choice there? Here I sneak this second issue into the same bug report because it is in the same area, is very small, and if you disagree it is fine with me if the current text is left remaining. But I can still mention it in passing as a possible improvement in that area. Thank you again for maintaining the Debian Reference manual! It is a very useful reference. Bob -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
