only one ping from router

[Tom H]

On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 4:45 AM, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
> Tom H wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
>>> Tom H wrote:


>>>> It's better to use "ip a" (short of "ip address show") because
>>>> "ifconfig" is obsolete.
>>>
>>> Do you have a reference for that allegation? It seems that Ubuntu
>>> doesn't know about it - this is from a 13.04 machine:
>>>
>>> $ grep -r ifconfig /etc/init /etc/init.d
>>> /etc/init/network-interface.conf: ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up || true
>>> $ grep -r 'ip ' /etc/init /etc/init.d
>>> $
>>>
>>> Granted, this is not necessarily an exhaustive research but I also
>>> briefly tried to find something with the help of $SEARCH_ENGINE.
>>> Indeed there was a two year old page claiming that "On Linux
>>> ifconfig is obsolete" with a reference to "man ifconfig". However
>>> if I run "man ifconfig" on a 13.04 machine, it isn't mentioned that
>>> ifconfig is obsolete.
>>
>> Old habits die hard. The maintainer of
>> "/etc/init/network-interface.conf" ought to be told that he's still
>> using ifconfig... If he's not one of these "I'll keep on using the
>> tools that I've been using since I first started using Linux/Unix,"
>> he'll change it.
>>
>> For the record, "/etc/init.d/bind9" also uses ifconfig. And there may
>> be others.
>
> I don't have bind9 installed and therefore didn't find that one.

I wasn't pointing out that you'd missed it, only that it was another
script that uses ifconfig.


>> See this 2009 post [1] for the obsoletion of net-tools.
>
>> [1]
>> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/net-> tools
>
> Thanks for the pointer. Ubuntu 13.04 has many packages which depend on
> the net-tools package. It seems like it takes a long time until an
> obsolete package actually gets replaced. Then I suppose I have a lot of
> time left to learn the use of the new tool. Anyway, thanks for the
> clarification.

You're welcome.

I very much doubt that ifconfig & co will disappear from the
repositories any time soon; if ever. But sooner or later they'll be
dropped from a default install.

There's a long list of reverse dependencies though:

# apt-cache rdepends --no-recommends --no-suggests net-tools
net-tools
Reverse Depends:
  zentyal-network
  xrsh
 |wicd-daemon
 |wicd-daemon
  waagent
  vpnc-scripts
  util-vserver
  tunneldigger-utils
  tntnet
  tiger
  systraq
  systemtap-server
  sugar-presence-service-0.90
  snort-pgsql
  snort-mysql
  snort
  sitesummary
  rkhunter
  portsentry
  pmacct
  openstack-resource-agents
  opendrim-lmp-ip
  opendrim-lmp-ethernetport
  oidentd
  ntop-dbg
  ntop
  libopendrim0
  libnet-ifconfig-wrapper-perl
  libguestfs0
  kvpnc
  ifupdown-extra
  guestfsd
  grml-shlib
  gogoc
  gnome-nettool
  fiaif
  facter-customfacts-plugin
  dyndns
  dtc-xen
  dhcp-probe
  bitlbee-common
  argus-server
  ubuntu-minimal
  rgmanager
  openvpn
  facter
  chkrootkit
  bind9

wicd-daemon is the only package in this list that can be installed
without net-tools being pulled in too because of:

# apt-cache show wicd-daemon
...
Depends: ..., net-tools | iproute, ...