On 2012/04/01 13:45, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 04/02/2012 04:09 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
On Sun, 2012-04-01 at 09:10 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
On Sun, 2012-04-01 at 21:17 +0800, Alick Zhao wrote:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:56:01 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
To make ifconfig obsolete is really weird. It sounds to me that developers of Fedora have to much time on their hands. Next I expect they will change the name of vi. Oh, I forgot it is now vim. Where is Ed Joy when we need him? [He was the creator of vi, in the very beginning.]
AFAIK ifconfig is deprecated in favor of iproute2, which seems not specific to Fedora. See also the link below[1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifconfig#Current_status
-- alick Fedora 16 (Verne) user https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Alick
Let me extend my rant a little bit further. There is no program under F16 called iproute2.
OK, so somewhere along the line someone misspoke or a misunderstanding arose. BFD.
The man page for ifconfig simply states: "This program is obsolete! For replacement check ip addr and ip link. For statistics use ip -s link."
The ip command is part of the iproute2 "package". Misunderstanding cleared. I'm not going to back in this thread to see where the problem arose, but if it is the documentation causing it, then by all means a bugzilla should be written.
Ifconfig is rather straight forward program that can be used to handle the limited things that it does. It is straightforward to use with a limited number of options, therefore easy to understand. The man page for ifconfig suggests that instead you use ip with some of its options. ip , unlike ifcongog is a very complex program. Its total numenr of options and variations is mind bogelling. Therefore to get Familist with its use is similarly complex. If you have a simple command that does what needs to be done, replacing it with an extremely complex command should be avoided.
The man page is just telling you the state of play regarding and the "Busg" section at the end touches on its limitations. Yes, it works just fine for most people most of the time. Go ahead. Keep using it. Just like "nslookup", it is fine for most things and no reason to go ahead and concern yourself with learning "dig".
So, go ahead, keep using ifconfig. Just don't be surprised when/if at some point it no longer is part of this or other distributions.
Unfortunately "ip" violates one of the earliest tenets of the 'ix family. It's command environment was envisioned as a large number of simple commands that could be strung together to create larger capabilities. "ip" is one complex rather hard to understand command that appears to be do everything for everybody at the expense of simplicity. "ifconfig" is, itself, probably past the small programs doing small things paradigm. "ip" is a behemoth trying to be all and end all for all. It is a fundamentally bad design for its position in the command hierarchy. But that's OK. It's free. So you have to accept what you can get free. Were I purchasing a formal RedHat license I'd consider some other environment if I were forced to use a small number of complex tools rather than a larger number of simpler tools. I can make my own complex tools as needed, thank you.
IMAO "ip" sucks dead bunnies through garden hoses. {^_^}