There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
1–10 of 270 posts
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#2Back in 2005 I was actually wondering why ipsuite wasn't part of standard Debian, tbh, which at the time was very big in the networking world
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#3Isn't the described mismatch between "reality" and what ifconfig reports once again a case of systemd (networkd) not exposing IP aliases in the traditional way, and replacing established network concepts by it's own stuff? Meant as a genuine question rather than trolling (though I know I'd hate to bow to whatever systemd comes up with rather than just using ifconfig which has worked since the begin of times) eg. there might be a material problem here in how network interfaces are presented by ifconfig.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#4Isn't the described mismatch between "reality" and what ifconfig reports once again a case of systemd (networkd) not exposing IP aliases in the traditional way, and replacing established network concepts by it's own stuff? Meant as a genuine question rather than trolling (though I know I'd hate to bow to whatever systemd comes up with rather than just using ifconfig which has worked since the begin of times) eg. ther…
No. systemd has nothing to do with this. the issue has existed long before systemd. it's the kernel that changed to allow interfaces to have alias addresses.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#5I noticed some shortcomings in ifconfig (only shows the first ip assigned to an interface if a NIC has many) so in some senses i see why it had to be updated, by i see no logical reason why both the command and the syntaxes had to change? Why not stick to the parameter standard at least?
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#6Isn't the described mismatch between "reality" and what ifconfig reports once again a case of systemd (networkd) not exposing IP aliases in the traditional way, and replacing established network concepts by it's own stuff? Meant as a genuine question rather than trolling (though I know I'd hate to bow to whatever systemd comes up with rather than just using ifconfig which has worked since the begin of times) eg. ther…
Not that I know. Systemd itself doesn't manage networking (resolved, networkd and other services do that instead under the SD umbrella).
But those work (to my knowledge) just like before (unless you setup private networking or otherwise container the thing). They just work differently on the surface.
I wouldn't know of a way of exposing IP aliases in a non-traditional way as the kernel needs to know them either way.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#7What's all the fuzz about this "sudden" change? iproute2 is part of linux (kernel) since 1999 or so.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#8I noticed some shortcomings in ifconfig (only shows the first ip assigned to an interface if a NIC has many) so in some senses i see why it had to be updated, by i see no logical reason why both the command and the syntaxes had to change? Why not stick to the parameter standard at least?
if you're changing underlying functionality, you'll have to change at least some of those parameters ("show me the first IP address" of an interface might be a contrived example). So now you have the option to slightly change the parameters and keep some, but not all of the behavior, maybe even in a slightly different way or you can have a clean break and clean up the old parameter list with all its accumulated cruft and go for a designed and thought-out interface.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#9What's all the fuzz about this "sudden" change? iproute2 is part of linux (kernel) since 1999 or so.
It promptly got filed under "ah, learn that one day", then after coming up enough times got relegated to "ugh, stop bothering me about it, I'll get to it eventually" and everyone has been un-motivated-ly unimpressed about it ever since.
I think.
Re: There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
#10I'm all for the new tools (and actually prefer ip over ifconfig).
However, they really screwed up with ss: the output is really unusable/unreadable.
This really only becomes obvious when you pass the -p flag, where the program information is printed on its own line.
It gets slightly better if you pipe the output through cat: now the program information is printed on the same line, but the column spacing is incorrect instead.
On the other hand it's nice that they kept compatibility, at least for the most common flags (e.g. -nltp does the same thing in both).