atom feed57 messages in org.freebsd.freebsd-stableDesired behaviour of "ifconfig -alias"
FromSent OnAttachments
Kevin WayFeb 9, 2007 9:35 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 9, 2007 9:48 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 9, 2007 10:54 pm 
JoaoBRFeb 10, 2007 1:00 am 
Kevin WayFeb 10, 2007 2:13 am 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 10, 2007 2:47 am 
Ian SmithFeb 10, 2007 5:12 am 
JoaoBRFeb 10, 2007 10:16 am 
Michael NottebrockFeb 10, 2007 12:15 pm 
Ian SmithFeb 10, 2007 2:19 pm 
Bruce M. SimpsonFeb 11, 2007 1:35 am 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 2:26 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 2:42 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 12, 2007 3:36 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 4:22 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 4:36 pm 
JoaoBRFeb 12, 2007 5:27 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 5:39 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 5:59 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 6:09 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 6:23 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 6:40 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 12, 2007 7:16 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 7:27 pm 
John HayFeb 12, 2007 7:32 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 12, 2007 7:34 pm 
Brooks DavisFeb 12, 2007 7:43 pm 
Freddie CashFeb 12, 2007 7:47 pm 
JoaoBRFeb 12, 2007 7:54 pm 
JoaoBRFeb 12, 2007 9:17 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 12, 2007 10:04 pm 
J. T. FarmerFeb 12, 2007 11:14 pm 
Kevin WayFeb 12, 2007 11:26 pm 
Joerg PernfussFeb 13, 2007 2:01 am 
Brooks DavisFeb 13, 2007 2:23 am 
Sam LefflerFeb 13, 2007 4:00 am 
Freddie CashFeb 13, 2007 6:08 am 
JoaoBRFeb 13, 2007 7:43 am 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 7:57 am 
JoaoBRFeb 13, 2007 8:52 am 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 10:38 am 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 10:47 am 
Bruce M. SimpsonFeb 13, 2007 1:17 pm 
Freddie CashFeb 13, 2007 5:14 pm 
Pete FrenchFeb 13, 2007 5:19 pm 
Freddie CashFeb 13, 2007 5:22 pm 
Freddie CashFeb 13, 2007 5:44 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 13, 2007 6:08 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 6:37 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 6:41 pm 
Freddie CashFeb 13, 2007 6:55 pm 
sth...@nethelp.noFeb 13, 2007 7:02 pm 
Joan Picanyol i PuigFeb 13, 2007 7:04 pm 
Patrick M. HausenFeb 13, 2007 7:10 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 8:06 pm 
Oliver FrommeFeb 13, 2007 8:36 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickFeb 13, 2007 9:32 pm 
Subject:Desired behaviour of "ifconfig -alias"
From:Jeremy Chadwick (koi@FreeBSD.org)
Date:Feb 9, 2007 9:48:52 pm
List:org.freebsd.freebsd-stable

On Fri, Feb 09, 2007 at 04:06:56PM -0500, Kevin Way wrote:

I recently ran into a bug in the jail startup scripts that caused this command to be executed:

ifconfig bce0 -alias

It turns out that this command eliminated the primary IP for the device.

man ifconfig defines the behavior of -alias to be:

-alias Remove the network address specified. This would be used if you incorrectly specified an alias, or it was no longer needed. If you have incorrectly set an NS address having the side effect of specifying the host portion, removing all NS addresses will allow you to respecify the host portion.

I can't help but wonder if it would be better behavior to throw an error when no argument is supplied.

The only discussion I found of this in a quick search of the archives was a post in 2004 which noted that the fxp driver actually deletes all IP addresses, but there was no significant follow-up.

Should ifconfig throw an error if no address is supplied?

My vote is for either 1) an error, or 2) delete all of the aliases associated with that interface. If I had a preference, I'd choose #1.

I'd argue that -alias doing what you described (removing the non-aliased IP bound to the iface) when no inet/inet6 arguments are suppied is indeed a bug.

-- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |