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 <listitem><para> 39 <ulink url="setkey.html">setkey</ulink>. 40 </para></listitem> 41</itemizedlist> 42</sect1> 43 44<sect1> 45<title>Historical notes</title> 46 47<para> 48This package appeared as a desperate attempt to bring some life 49to state of basic networking applets: <command/ping/, <command/traceroute/ 50etc. Though it was known that port of BSD <command/ping/ to Linux 51was basically broken, neither maintainers of well known (and superb) 52Linux net-tools package nor maintainers of Linux distributions 53worried about fixing well known bugs, which were reported in linux-kernel 54and linux-net mail lists for ages, were identified and nevertheless 55not repaired. So, one day 1001th resuming of the subject happened 56to be the last straw to break camel's back, I just parsed my hard disks 57and collected a set of utilities, which shared the following properties: 58</para> 59 60<itemizedlist> 61 <listitem><para> 62Small 63 </para></listitem> 64 <listitem><para> 65Useful despite of this 66 </para></listitem> 67 <listitem><para> 68I never seen it was made right 69 </para></listitem> 70 <listitem><para> 71Not quite trivial 72 </para></listitem> 73 <listitem><para> 74Demonstrating some important feature of Linux 75 </para></listitem> 76 <listitem><para> 77The last but not the least, I use it more or less regularly 78 </para></listitem> 79</itemizedlist> 80 81<para> 82This utility set was not supposed to be a reference set or something like 83that. Most of them were cloned from some originals: 84<informaltable> 85 <tgroup cols=2><tbody> 86 <row> 87 <entry>ping</entry> 88 <entry>cloned of an ancient NetTools-B-xx</entry> 89 </row> 90 <row> 91 <entry>ping6</entry> 92 <entry>cloned of a very old Pedro's utility set</entry> 93 </row> 94 <row> 95 <entry>traceroute6</entry> 96 <entry>cloned of NRL Sep 96 distribution</entry> 97 </row> 98 <row> 99 <entry>rdisc</entry> 100 <entry>cloned of SUN in.rdisc</entry> 101 </row> 102 <row> 103 <entry>clockdiff</entry> 104 <entry>broken out of some BSD timed</entry> 105 </row> 106 <row> 107 <entry>tftpd</entry> 108 <entry>it is clone of some ancient NetKit package</entry> 109 </row> 110 </tbody></tgroup> 111</informaltable> 112</para> 113 114<para> 115Also I added some utilities written from scratch, namely 116<command/tracepath/, <command/arping/ and later <command/rarpd/ 117(the last one does not satisfy all the criteria, I used it two or three 118times). 119</para> 120 121<para> 122Hesitated a bit I overcame temptation to add <command/traceroute/. 123The variant released by LBNL to that time was mostly sane and bugs 124in it were mostly not specific to Linux, but main reason was that 125the latest version of LBNL <command/traceroute/ was not 126<emphasis/small/, it consisted of several files, 127used a wicked (and failing with Linux :-)) autoconfiguration etc. 128So, instead I assembled to iputils a simplistic <command/tracepath/ utility 129and IPv6 version of traceroute, and published my 130<ulink url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/lbl-tools"> patches</ulink>. 131to LBNL <command/traceroute/ separately.<footnote><para>This was mistake. 132Due to this <command/traceroute/ was in a sad state until recently. 133Good news, redhat-7.2 seems to add these patches to their traceroute 134rpm eventually. So, I think I will refrain of suicide for awhile. 135</para></footnote> 136</para> 137 138</sect1> 139 140<sect1> 141<title>Installation notes</title> 142<para> 143<userinput/make/ to compile utilities. <userinput/make html/ to prepare 144html documentation, <userinput/make man/ if you prefer man pages. 145Nothing fancy, provided you have DocBook package installed. 146</para> 147 148<para> 149<userinput/make install/ installs <emphasis/only/ HTML documentation 150to <filename>/usr/doc/iputils</filename>. It even does not try 151to install binaries and man pages. If you read historical 152notes above, the reason should be evident. Most of utilities 153intersect with utilities distributed in another packages, and 154making such target rewriting existing installation would be a crime 155from my side. The decision what variant of <command/ping/ is preferred, 156how to resolve the conflicts etc. is left to you or to person who 157assembled an rpm. I vote for variant from <command/iputils/ of course. 158</para> 159 160<para> 161Anyway, select utilities which you like and install them to the places 162which you prefer together with their man pages. 163</para> 164 165 166<para> 167It is possible that compilation will fail, if you use some 168funny Linux distribution mangling header files in some unexpected ways 169(expected ones are the ways of redhat of course :-)). 170I validate iputils against <ulink url="http://www.asplinux.ru">asplinux</ulink> 171distribution, which is inevitably followed by validity with respect 172to <ulink url="http://www.redhat.com">redhat</ulink>. 173If your distribution is one of widely known ones, suse or debian, 174it also will compile provided snapshot is elder than month or so and 175someone reported all the problems, if they took place at all. 176</para> 177 178<para> 179<emphasis> 180Anyway, please, do not abuse me complaining about some compilation problems 181in any distribution different of asplinux or redhat. 182If you have a fix, please, send it to 183<ulink url="mailto:kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru">me</ulink>, 184I will check that it does not break distributions mentioned above 185and apply it. But I am not going to undertake any investigations, 186bare reports are deemed to be routed to <filename>/dev/null</filename>. 187</emphasis> 188</para> 189 190</sect1> 191 192<sect1><title>Availability</title> 193 194<para> 195The collection of documents is part of <filename/iputils/ package 196and the latest versions are available in source form for anonymous ftp 197<ulink url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iputils-current.tar.gz"> 198ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iputils-current.tar.gz</ulink>. 199</para> 200</sect1> 201 202 203<sect1> 204<title>Copying</title> 205<para> 206Different files are copyrighted by different persons and organizations 207and distributed under different licenses. For details look into corresponding 208source files. 209</para> 210</sect1> 211 212</article> 213