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