[zdw]

Mac OS X and Linux are the only OS's that I'm aware of that put all ethernet nics in the same device namespace.

Everyone else has separate device namespaces for - you might have an fxp0 , rl0, hme0, etc. on any BSD or Solaris machine.

Rather than looking in /dev, they really ought to be parsing the output of ifconfig -a.

[nailer]

1. Linux gives unique names to each NIC. There are no namespace conflicts, because each NIC alias is unique within devices. I personally do not care about the chipset manufacturer and driver when working on a routing issue.

2. You mean (IIRC) 'ip link show'. ifconfig on linux isn't maintained, and breaks in a bunch of situations (Aliases on VLANs on bonds, for one)

3. And you should of course use python-procfs or your preferred equiv, not parse the output of other tools.

On the article in general: can't you use /dev/by-manufacturer these days or similar? I haven't been working on OS stuff recently so can't remember if that became standard.

[ominous_prime]

somewhat OT:

> 2. You mean (IIRC) 'ip link show'. ifconfig on linux isn't maintained, and breaks in a bunch of situations (Aliases on VLANs on bonds, for one)

This seemingly simple change seems to be taking forever to gain traction; "use `ip` for network config on linux".

There is so much googlable stuff instructing one to use ifconfig, route, etc. that it seems to self perpetuate. I often find people telling others that "you can't do that in Linux", when the real answer is along the lines of "you can't do that with the route command" (to give an example that I've seen a few times recently, route can't manipulate routing tables)

[zdw]

It's not that it self-perpetuates, it's that nearly every other Unix does it that way, and thus there's an expectation that ifconfig, if it exists, has similar functionality on all platforms.

If you're going to deprecate a command, make running the old one either:

1. Not exist, and thus have the shell throw an "command not found" error

2. Print a useful message like "Use <newcommand> instead"

3. Work, but do #2 as well.

The current situation is like leaving a pair of rusty pliers out in the open, and hiding the brand new socket set when the goal is tightening a bunch of bolts.

[nailer]

Yeah, the Linux distros (which themselves obviously only use 'ip') should have done #2 10 years ago.

When I worked at Red Hat (till 2005) their official RHCE documentation still told people to use ifconfig and route.

[ominous_prime]

I agree wholeheartedly that the old tools should be hidden away, and I assume that they haven't been, because that will break more things than the actual renaming of devices. I bet even adding deprecation warnings could cause a ruckus, seeing how many times I've come across `ifconfig | something` both in scripts and people shelling out from other languages. I do wish the distros would just make a clean break, and let people fix their crappy code.

[kelnos]

Then you just make the deprecation warning go to stderr instead of stdout. '|' only redirects stdout.

[ominous_prime]

True - I'm just grasping as straws to come up with an excuse as to why this has gone on for so long.

[vdm]

Love the tools analogy! So true. LOL

[vacri]

I used ifconfig until about halfway through last year when someone pointed 'ip' out to me. I kept using ifconfig right up until the point I found that ip didn't require root rights...

[ominous_prime]

Neither needs root privileges to display interface status. Perhaps it's a PATH issue for you - sbin/ is often left out of the PATH for regular users.

[vacri]

Fair enough, thanks for the info. I just generally found that I couldn't simply make it work on a standard debian install and assumed it was permissions.

ta

[CrLf]

Having all ethernet devices called "ethX" makes it much easier to parse the output of ifconfig and exclude any non-ethernet interfaces (tunnels and such).

[andrewf]

My primary network interface has just become "en0" again, after being "en1" for about 8 years (the time between my first iBook with 802.11b, and getting a MacBook Air which doesn't have an ethernet port).