ip vs. if{up,down}

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Mon Mar 14 21:22:01 EST 2005


On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 22:19:29 -0500, Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote:
> Alexey's original code had almost no comments whatsoever...

Duh.  If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.  Don't
you know that?  ;-)

> ... you can use ifup to bring up your dial-up connections on the command line.

  Yup.  It's been this was since at least as far back as RHL 6.2.  I
suspect it's even older, but anything before that and I'd have to pull
archive tape for my brain.

  All "ifup foo" does is look for a file

	/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-foo

and source it for configuration.  The "DEV=" statement in the ifcfg-
file is what actually controls the kernel device that gets used.  I've
used this to configure multiple options for a single Ethernet
interface before (ifcfg-home, ifcfg-work, etc.).

  I understand that there is still more sohpisticated stuff for
switching network configs around, added circa RHL 7.x, but I never got
around to checking it out.

>> like virtual hosting).  Finally, if portability is one's goal,
>> "ifconfig" would be the best answer.
> 
> I'm not sure I really agree with that...

  Well, I wrote that in the sense that "ifconfig" will likely be
closer to other nixes then "ip blah blah blah" will be.  At least one
can type "man ifconfig" and get answers.  :)

> Their syntax for ifconfig (IIRC) is quite different than that for Linux.

  It has been some time, but I've fumbled my way through an "ifconfig"
command on some flavor of BSD before, and it wasn't that different
then Linux, IIRC.

  "I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere!"



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