Kevin Way wrote:

No, I wouldn't answer that, because there is no such thing as a primary IP. All IPs on an interface are equal. The term alias exists only for historical reasons, and it's clearly becoming obsolete.

If asked what "-alias" does, I would reply that it is an alias for "delete" or "remove", which removes an IP address from an interface. According to the docs, the IP address to be removed must be specified. The docs don't mention what happens if none is specified, so the behaviour is undefined and should not be relied on. It just happens that the behaviour is to remove an arbitrary IP address (which happens to be the first one).

That behaviour should be documented in the manual page.

That's clearly a bug in the scripts then. They shouldn't call a command that can cause undefined behaviour.

I'm not against changing the behaviour for the -alias parameter, if it's done carefully and in -current first, as I wrote earlier. However, the behaviour for "delete" and "remove" should stay as-is (and be documented in the man page) because it makes sense.

Best regards Oliver

"Documentation is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's better than nothing." -- Dick Brandon