iputils.db revision 313379eb6b9da55f7371adef39a92153a0707d4a 
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>
45This package appeared as a desperate attempt to bring some life
46to state of basic networking applets: <command/ping/, <command/traceroute/
47etc. Though it was known that port of BSD <command/ping/ to Linux
48was basically broken, neither maintainers of well known (and superb)
49Linux net-tools package nor maintainers of Linux distributions
50worried about fixing well known bugs, which were reported in linux-kernel
51and linux-net mail lists for ages, were identified and nevertheless
52not repaired. So, one day 1001th resuming of the subject happened
53to be the last straw to break camel's back, I just parsed my hard disks
54and collected a set of utilities, which shared the following properties:
55</para>
56
57<itemizedlist>
58 <listitem><para>
59Small
60 </para></listitem>
61 <listitem><para>
62Useful despite of this
63 </para></listitem>
64 <listitem><para>
65I never seen it was made right
66 </para></listitem>
67 <listitem><para>
68Not quite trivial
69 </para></listitem>
70 <listitem><para>
71Demonstrating some important feature of Linux 
72 </para></listitem>
73 <listitem><para>
74The last but not the least, I use it more or less regularly
75 </para></listitem>
76</itemizedlist>
77
78<para>
79This utility set was not supposed to be a reference set or something like
80that. 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>
112Also 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
115times).
116</para>
117
118<para>
119Hesitated a bit I overcame temptation to add <command/traceroute/.
120The variant released by LBNL to that time was mostly sane and bugs
121in it were mostly not specific to Linux, but main reason was that
122the latest version of LBNL <command/traceroute/ was not 
123<emphasis/small/, it consisted of several files,
124used a wicked (and failing with Linux :-)) autoconfiguration etc.
125So, instead I assembled to iputils a simplistic <command/tracepath/ utility
126and IPv6 version of traceroute, and published my 
127<ulink url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/lbl-tools"> patches</ulink>.
128to LBNL <command/traceroute/ separately.<footnote><para>This was mistake.
129Due to this <command/traceroute/ was in a sad state until recently.
130Good news, redhat-7.2 seems to add these patches to their traceroute
131rpm 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
141html documentation, <userinput/make man/ if you prefer man pages.
142Nothing fancy, provided you have DocBook package installed.
143</para>
144
145<para>
146<userinput/make install/ installs <emphasis/only/ HTML documentation
147to <filename>/usr/doc/iputils</filename>. It even does not try
148to install binaries and man pages. If you read historical
149notes above, the reason should be evident. Most of utilities
150intersect with utilities distributed in another packages, and
151making such target rewriting existing installation would be a crime
152from my side. The decision what variant of <command/ping/ is preferred,
153how to resolve the conflicts etc. is left to you or to person who
154assembled an rpm. I vote for variant from <command/iputils/ of course.
155</para>
156
157<para>
158Anyway, select utilities which you like and install them to the places
159which you prefer together with their man pages.
160</para>
161
162
163<para>
164It is possible that compilation will fail, if you use some
165funny Linux distribution mangling header files in some unexpected ways
166(expected ones are the ways of redhat of course :-)).
167I validate iputils against <ulink url="http://www.asplinux.ru">asplinux</ulink>
168distribution, which is inevitably followed by validity with respect
169to <ulink url="http://www.redhat.com">redhat</ulink>.
170If your distribution is one of widely known ones, suse or debian,
171it also will compile provided snapshot is elder than month or so and
172someone reported all the problems, if they took place at all.
173</para>
174
175<para>
176<emphasis>
177Anyway, please, do not abuse me complaining about some compilation problems
178in any distribution different of asplinux or redhat.
179If you have a fix, please, send it to
180<ulink url="mailto:kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru">me</ulink>,
181I will check that it does not break distributions mentioned above
182and apply it. But I am not going to undertake any investigations,
183bare 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>
192The collection of documents is part of <filename/iputils/ package
193and the latest versions are  available in source form at
194<ulink url="http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2">
195http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-current.tar.bz2</ulink>.
196</para>
197</sect1>
198
199
200<sect1>
201<title>Copying</title>
202<para>
203Different files are copyrighted by different persons and organizations
204and distributed under different licenses. For details look into corresponding
205source files.
206</para>
207</sect1>
208
209</article>
210