Lorenzo Colitti | 313379e | 2013-07-11 01:07:11 +0900 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[]> |
| 2 | <article id="iputils"> |
| 3 | <artheader> |
| 4 | <title>iputils: documentation directory</title> |
| 5 | </artheader> |
| 6 | |
| 7 | <sect1> |
| 8 | <title>Index</title> |
| 9 | |
| 10 | <itemizedlist> |
| 11 | <listitem><para> |
| 12 | <ulink url="ping.html">ping, ping6</ulink>. |
| 13 | </para></listitem> |
| 14 | <listitem><para> |
| 15 | <ulink url="arping.html">arping</ulink>. |
| 16 | </para></listitem> |
| 17 | <listitem><para> |
| 18 | <ulink url="clockdiff.html">clockdiff</ulink>. |
| 19 | </para></listitem> |
| 20 | <listitem><para> |
| 21 | <ulink url="rarpd.html">rarpd</ulink>. |
| 22 | </para></listitem> |
| 23 | <listitem><para> |
| 24 | <ulink url="tracepath.html">tracepath, tracepath6</ulink>. |
| 25 | </para></listitem> |
| 26 | <listitem><para> |
| 27 | <ulink url="traceroute6.html">traceroute6</ulink>. |
| 28 | </para></listitem> |
| 29 | <listitem><para> |
| 30 | <ulink url="rdisc.html">rdisc</ulink>. |
| 31 | </para></listitem> |
| 32 | <listitem><para> |
| 33 | <ulink url="tftpd.html">tftpd</ulink>. |
| 34 | </para></listitem> |
| 35 | <listitem><para> |
| 36 | <ulink url="pg3.html">pg3, ipg, pgset</ulink>. |
| 37 | </para></listitem> |
| 38 | </itemizedlist> |
| 39 | </sect1> |
| 40 | |
| 41 | <sect1> |
| 42 | <title>Historical notes</title> |
| 43 | |
| 44 | <para> |
| 45 | This package appeared as a desperate attempt to bring some life |
| 46 | to state of basic networking applets: <command/ping/, <command/traceroute/ |
| 47 | etc. Though it was known that port of BSD <command/ping/ to Linux |
| 48 | was basically broken, neither maintainers of well known (and superb) |
| 49 | Linux net-tools package nor maintainers of Linux distributions |
| 50 | worried about fixing well known bugs, which were reported in linux-kernel |
| 51 | and linux-net mail lists for ages, were identified and nevertheless |
| 52 | not repaired. So, one day 1001th resuming of the subject happened |
| 53 | to be the last straw to break camel's back, I just parsed my hard disks |
| 54 | and collected a set of utilities, which shared the following properties: |
| 55 | </para> |
| 56 | |
| 57 | <itemizedlist> |
| 58 | <listitem><para> |
| 59 | Small |
| 60 | </para></listitem> |
| 61 | <listitem><para> |
| 62 | Useful despite of this |
| 63 | </para></listitem> |
| 64 | <listitem><para> |
| 65 | I never seen it was made right |
| 66 | </para></listitem> |
| 67 | <listitem><para> |
| 68 | Not quite trivial |
| 69 | </para></listitem> |
| 70 | <listitem><para> |
| 71 | Demonstrating some important feature of Linux |
| 72 | </para></listitem> |
| 73 | <listitem><para> |
| 74 | The last but not the least, I use it more or less regularly |
| 75 | </para></listitem> |
| 76 | </itemizedlist> |
| 77 | |
| 78 | <para> |
| 79 | This utility set was not supposed to be a reference set or something like |
| 80 | that. Most of them were cloned from some originals: |
| 81 | <informaltable> |
| 82 | <tgroup cols=2><tbody> |
| 83 | <row> |
| 84 | <entry>ping</entry> |
| 85 | <entry>cloned of an ancient NetTools-B-xx</entry> |
| 86 | </row> |
| 87 | <row> |
| 88 | <entry>ping6</entry> |
| 89 | <entry>cloned of a very old Pedro's utility set</entry> |
| 90 | </row> |
| 91 | <row> |
| 92 | <entry>traceroute6</entry> |
| 93 | <entry>cloned of NRL Sep 96 distribution</entry> |
| 94 | </row> |
| 95 | <row> |
| 96 | <entry>rdisc</entry> |
| 97 | <entry>cloned of SUN in.rdisc</entry> |
| 98 | </row> |
| 99 | <row> |
| 100 | <entry>clockdiff</entry> |
| 101 | <entry>broken out of some BSD timed</entry> |
| 102 | </row> |
| 103 | <row> |
| 104 | <entry>tftpd</entry> |
| 105 | <entry>it is clone of some ancient NetKit package</entry> |
| 106 | </row> |
| 107 | </tbody></tgroup> |
| 108 | </informaltable> |
| 109 | </para> |
| 110 | |
| 111 | <para> |
| 112 | Also I added some utilities written from scratch, namely |
| 113 | <command/tracepath/, <command/arping/ and later <command/rarpd/ |
| 114 | (the last one does not satisfy all the criteria, I used it two or three |
| 115 | times). |
| 116 | </para> |
| 117 | |
| 118 | <para> |
| 119 | Hesitated a bit I overcame temptation to add <command/traceroute/. |
| 120 | The variant released by LBNL to that time was mostly sane and bugs |
| 121 | in it were mostly not specific to Linux, but main reason was that |
| 122 | the latest version of LBNL <command/traceroute/ was not |
| 123 | <emphasis/small/, it consisted of several files, |
| 124 | used a wicked (and failing with Linux :-)) autoconfiguration etc. |
| 125 | So, instead I assembled to iputils a simplistic <command/tracepath/ utility |
| 126 | and IPv6 version of traceroute, and published my |
| 127 | <ulink url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/lbl-tools"> patches</ulink>. |
| 128 | to LBNL <command/traceroute/ separately.<footnote><para>This was mistake. |
| 129 | Due to this <command/traceroute/ was in a sad state until recently. |
| 130 | Good news, redhat-7.2 seems to add these patches to their traceroute |
| 131 | rpm eventually. So, I think I will refrain of suicide for awhile. |
| 132 | </para></footnote> |
| 133 | </para> |
| 134 | |
| 135 | </sect1> |
| 136 | |
| 137 | <sect1> |
| 138 | <title>Installation notes</title> |
| 139 | <para> |
| 140 | <userinput/make/ to compile utilities. <userinput/make html/ to prepare |
| 141 | html documentation, <userinput/make man/ if you prefer man pages. |
| 142 | Nothing fancy, provided you have DocBook package installed. |
| 143 | </para> |
| 144 | |
| 145 | <para> |
| 146 | <userinput/make install/ installs <emphasis/only/ HTML documentation |
| 147 | to <filename>/usr/doc/iputils</filename>. It even does not try |
| 148 | to install binaries and man pages. If you read historical |
| 149 | notes above, the reason should be evident. Most of utilities |
| 150 | intersect with utilities distributed in another packages, and |
| 151 | making such target rewriting existing installation would be a crime |
| 152 | from my side. The decision what variant of <command/ping/ is preferred, |
| 153 | how to resolve the conflicts etc. is left to you or to person who |
| 154 | assembled an rpm. I vote for variant from <command/iputils/ of course. |
| 155 | </para> |
| 156 | |
| 157 | <para> |
| 158 | Anyway, select utilities which you like and install them to the places |
| 159 | which you prefer together with their man pages. |
| 160 | </para> |
| 161 | |
| 162 | |
| 163 | <para> |
| 164 | It is possible that compilation will fail, if you use some |
| 165 | funny Linux distribution mangling header files in some unexpected ways |
| 166 | (expected ones are the ways of redhat of course :-)). |
| 167 | I validate iputils against <ulink url="http://www.asplinux.ru">asplinux</ulink> |
| 168 | distribution, which is inevitably followed by validity with respect |
| 169 | to <ulink url="http://www.redhat.com">redhat</ulink>. |
| 170 | If your distribution is one of widely known ones, suse or debian, |
| 171 | it also will compile provided snapshot is elder than month or so and |
| 172 | someone reported all the problems, if they took place at all. |
| 173 | </para> |
| 174 | |
| 175 | <para> |
| 176 | <emphasis> |
| 177 | Anyway, please, do not abuse me complaining about some compilation problems |
| 178 | in any distribution different of asplinux or redhat. |
| 179 | If you have a fix, please, send it to |
| 180 | <ulink url="mailto:kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru">me</ulink>, |
| 181 | I will check that it does not break distributions mentioned above |
| 182 | and apply it. But I am not going to undertake any investigations, |
| 183 | bare reports are deemed to be routed to <filename>/dev/null</filename>. |
| 184 | </emphasis> |
| 185 | </para> |
| 186 | |
| 187 | </sect1> |
| 188 | |
| 189 | <sect1><title>Availability</title> |
| 190 | |
| 191 | <para> |
| 192 | The collection of documents is part of <filename/iputils/ package |
| 193 | and the latest versions are available in source form at |
| 194 | <ulink url="http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2"> |
| 195 | http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2</ulink>. |
| 196 | </para> |
| 197 | </sect1> |
| 198 | |
| 199 | |
| 200 | <sect1> |
| 201 | <title>Copying</title> |
| 202 | <para> |
| 203 | Different files are copyrighted by different persons and organizations |
| 204 | and distributed under different licenses. For details look into corresponding |
| 205 | source files. |
| 206 | </para> |
| 207 | </sect1> |
| 208 | |
| 209 | </article> |