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A comment on There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc. Parent comment

Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by simias on Friday May 25, 2018 @07:07AM (#17152389)
I'm not sure "terse" is the right adjective. It presents basically the same amount of information as ifconfig (minus the packet counters) and actually adds a few more flags. It's all about the formatting really. Simply adding an empty line between each interface would go a long way. Also starting the line with the interface name instead of the index.

Adding more punctuation to delimit the fields (, : etc...) would be nice too. I mean what the hell:

    mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by blattimwind on Friday May 25, 2018 @08:52AM (#17153148)
It sounds a little bit like air traffic control: "roger dev gbe zero niner alpha one you are cleared for proto kernel scope link strip 4 dash 7 F L 11400 gamma zulu src please copy."
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by ahartmetz on Friday May 25, 2018 @09:21AM (#17153401)
Huh, does "ip" also support "tc" (traffic control) commands - qdisc is a queueing discipline... tc seems to be the an earlier thing from the people who brought us ip. tc must have the worst command line interface and documentation ever - it is very hard and very frustrating to use, like no other command line interface I've ever seen.

I once tried to use tc and gave up after more than a day of trying, that is how bad it is. The syntax is a word soup and the semantics are very poorly explained.

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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by pas on Friday May 25, 2018 @09:48AM (#17153645)
ip/ss/tc are all netfilter based things all in the iproute2 repo.

http://inai.de/images/nf-packet-flow.png

tc is implemented by packet pacing at either egress or ingress steps.

and this is how iproute2 compares to the old net-tools stuff: https://linoxide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Linux-Nettoo...

netfilter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netfilter#/media/File:Netfilte...

regarding UI/UX/CLI. yes, there's no arguing about it, it's just horrible. no documentation, no discoverability, no sanity. but it works, and it's free :o

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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by SEJeff on Friday May 25, 2018 @12:42PM (#17155427)
MegaCLI (lsi hw raid control) sees your tc and raised you a few million awful flags.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by Thlom on Friday May 25, 2018 @05:14PM (#17158047)
After working with it almost daily for years I'm finally fluent in MegaCLI. I can even understand the --help for the most part. Time to get a new job I guess.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by mmt on Saturday May 26, 2018 @01:21AM (#17160368)
Nah.. Just time to relearn it all with StorCLI instead.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by Thlom on Saturday May 26, 2018 @04:24AM (#17160859)
:-(
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by trelliscoded on Saturday May 26, 2018 @01:02AM (#17160306)
I see your MegaCLI and raise you certutil: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrati...
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by SEJeff on Saturday May 26, 2018 @09:34PM (#17165054)
Oh fair enough but in the context of Linux command lines I think MegaCLI is genuinely one of the worst UX designs ever. Up until recently (post Balmer), Microsoft didn’t heavily emphasize the CLI for most things so a bad UX is not surprising.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by russh on Friday May 25, 2018 @03:20PM (#17157002)
I'm pretty sure MegaCLI was written by someone who used to write software for digital phone switches.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by duskwuff on Friday May 25, 2018 @04:15PM (#17157502)
Ah, my old friend MegaCLI. Simultaneously the most verbose and the most useless --help output I've ever seen from a command-line program.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by OnMyPhone on Friday May 25, 2018 @10:18AM (#17153924)
I spent a bit too long on playing with tc a while ago. The best I could get it was to limit each person's download speeds from the one internet connection we had.

I'm with you on tc having the worst interface and documentation that I have seen from a command before. I spent maybe a few days total on it then gave up because I figured if there isn't much documentation on it, it isn't worth figuring out.

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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by sanjayjc on Friday May 25, 2018 @03:39PM (#17157164)
I used tc for something interesting once: I setup Cassandra nodes in distinct docker containers running on a single laptop. I installed tc in each container to throttle packets flowing between containers and in so doing, simulated a lossy, high latency WAN network. The goal was to evaluate how Cassandra fared as network latencies increased.

tc fit the bill nicely.

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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by nineteen999 on Sunday May 27, 2018 @10:04PM (#17170223)
Did you remember to disable your swap file/partition?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22988824/why-swap-needs-...

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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by isostatic on Friday May 25, 2018 @07:28AM (#17152502)
So glad I'm not the only one with the same criticisms
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by pas on Friday May 25, 2018 @09:53AM (#17153695)
I think the problem is, that these tools lack the extended human friendly output. They work well for those who use them regularly, but there's no `ip --explain`. Alas Linux and the kernel is famous for having very barebones or bloated and useless documentation.
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by kees99 on Friday May 25, 2018 @09:14AM (#17153326)
I can take "mtu 1500" part, and sort-of "qdisc", but what's up with repeating obscure parameters at their default values, for each and IP address:

  valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
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Re:There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, net... by pas on Friday May 25, 2018 @09:51AM (#17153665)
Those are lifetimes for default (outgoing) address selection.

RFC 3484 "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)".

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