| <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN"[]> |
| <article id="iputils"> |
| <artheader> |
| <title>iputils: documentation directory</title> |
| </artheader> |
| |
| <sect1> |
| <title>Index</title> |
| |
| <itemizedlist> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="ping.html">ping, ping6</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="arping.html">arping</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="clockdiff.html">clockdiff</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="rarpd.html">rarpd</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="tracepath.html">tracepath, tracepath6</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="traceroute6.html">traceroute6</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="rdisc.html">rdisc</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="tftpd.html">tftpd</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| <ulink url="pg3.html">pg3, ipg, pgset</ulink>. |
| </para></listitem> |
| </itemizedlist> |
| </sect1> |
| |
| <sect1> |
| <title>Historical notes</title> |
| |
| <para> |
| This package appeared as a desperate attempt to bring some life |
| to state of basic networking applets: <command/ping/, <command/traceroute/ |
| etc. Though it was known that port of BSD <command/ping/ to Linux |
| was basically broken, neither maintainers of well known (and superb) |
| Linux net-tools package nor maintainers of Linux distributions |
| worried about fixing well known bugs, which were reported in linux-kernel |
| and linux-net mail lists for ages, were identified and nevertheless |
| not repaired. So, one day 1001th resuming of the subject happened |
| to be the last straw to break camel's back, I just parsed my hard disks |
| and collected a set of utilities, which shared the following properties: |
| </para> |
| |
| <itemizedlist> |
| <listitem><para> |
| Small |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| Useful despite of this |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| I never seen it was made right |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| Not quite trivial |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| Demonstrating some important feature of Linux |
| </para></listitem> |
| <listitem><para> |
| The last but not the least, I use it more or less regularly |
| </para></listitem> |
| </itemizedlist> |
| |
| <para> |
| This utility set was not supposed to be a reference set or something like |
| that. Most of them were cloned from some originals: |
| <informaltable> |
| <tgroup cols=2><tbody> |
| <row> |
| <entry>ping</entry> |
| <entry>cloned of an ancient NetTools-B-xx</entry> |
| </row> |
| <row> |
| <entry>ping6</entry> |
| <entry>cloned of a very old Pedro's utility set</entry> |
| </row> |
| <row> |
| <entry>traceroute6</entry> |
| <entry>cloned of NRL Sep 96 distribution</entry> |
| </row> |
| <row> |
| <entry>rdisc</entry> |
| <entry>cloned of SUN in.rdisc</entry> |
| </row> |
| <row> |
| <entry>clockdiff</entry> |
| <entry>broken out of some BSD timed</entry> |
| </row> |
| <row> |
| <entry>tftpd</entry> |
| <entry>it is clone of some ancient NetKit package</entry> |
| </row> |
| </tbody></tgroup> |
| </informaltable> |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Also I added some utilities written from scratch, namely |
| <command/tracepath/, <command/arping/ and later <command/rarpd/ |
| (the last one does not satisfy all the criteria, I used it two or three |
| times). |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Hesitated a bit I overcame temptation to add <command/traceroute/. |
| The variant released by LBNL to that time was mostly sane and bugs |
| in it were mostly not specific to Linux, but main reason was that |
| the latest version of LBNL <command/traceroute/ was not |
| <emphasis/small/, it consisted of several files, |
| used a wicked (and failing with Linux :-)) autoconfiguration etc. |
| So, instead I assembled to iputils a simplistic <command/tracepath/ utility |
| and IPv6 version of traceroute, and published my |
| <ulink url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/lbl-tools"> patches</ulink>. |
| to LBNL <command/traceroute/ separately.<footnote><para>This was mistake. |
| Due to this <command/traceroute/ was in a sad state until recently. |
| Good news, redhat-7.2 seems to add these patches to their traceroute |
| rpm eventually. So, I think I will refrain of suicide for awhile. |
| </para></footnote> |
| </para> |
| |
| </sect1> |
| |
| <sect1> |
| <title>Installation notes</title> |
| <para> |
| <userinput/make/ to compile utilities. <userinput/make html/ to prepare |
| html documentation, <userinput/make man/ if you prefer man pages. |
| Nothing fancy, provided you have DocBook package installed. |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| <userinput/make install/ installs <emphasis/only/ HTML documentation |
| to <filename>/usr/doc/iputils</filename>. It even does not try |
| to install binaries and man pages. If you read historical |
| notes above, the reason should be evident. Most of utilities |
| intersect with utilities distributed in another packages, and |
| making such target rewriting existing installation would be a crime |
| from my side. The decision what variant of <command/ping/ is preferred, |
| how to resolve the conflicts etc. is left to you or to person who |
| assembled an rpm. I vote for variant from <command/iputils/ of course. |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| Anyway, select utilities which you like and install them to the places |
| which you prefer together with their man pages. |
| </para> |
| |
| |
| <para> |
| It is possible that compilation will fail, if you use some |
| funny Linux distribution mangling header files in some unexpected ways |
| (expected ones are the ways of redhat of course :-)). |
| I validate iputils against <ulink url="http://www.asplinux.ru">asplinux</ulink> |
| distribution, which is inevitably followed by validity with respect |
| to <ulink url="http://www.redhat.com">redhat</ulink>. |
| If your distribution is one of widely known ones, suse or debian, |
| it also will compile provided snapshot is elder than month or so and |
| someone reported all the problems, if they took place at all. |
| </para> |
| |
| <para> |
| <emphasis> |
| Anyway, please, do not abuse me complaining about some compilation problems |
| in any distribution different of asplinux or redhat. |
| If you have a fix, please, send it to |
| <ulink url="mailto:kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru">me</ulink>, |
| I will check that it does not break distributions mentioned above |
| and apply it. But I am not going to undertake any investigations, |
| bare reports are deemed to be routed to <filename>/dev/null</filename>. |
| </emphasis> |
| </para> |
| |
| </sect1> |
| |
| <sect1><title>Availability</title> |
| |
| <para> |
| The collection of documents is part of <filename/iputils/ package |
| and the latest versions are available in source form at |
| <ulink url="http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2"> |
| http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2</ulink>. |
| </para> |
| </sect1> |
| |
| |
| <sect1> |
| <title>Copying</title> |
| <para> |
| Different files are copyrighted by different persons and organizations |
| and distributed under different licenses. For details look into corresponding |
| source files. |
| </para> |
| </sect1> |
| |
| </article> |