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Don't reboot...
Authored by: csdk0713 on Jan 21, '05 02:24:52PM

You touched a nerve and I had to respond.

ifconfig is not a "legacy" anything. This is what actually does the work behind the scenes.

Furthermore..."legacy" is a marketing term. If a command/utility is being phased out or should not be used, the correct term would be "deprecated", NOT legacy. ifconfig is neither.



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Don't reboot...
Authored by: peragrin on Jan 21, '05 03:43:07PM

Evedience of ifconfig usefulness is of all people MSFT.

Windows until 2000 had winIPcfg a gui program. win2k, win xp, win2k3, etc includes a commandline program called ipconfig. It works very similar to ifconfig.

Also note that Longtooth is supposed to include a proper commandline and shell called MSH. If command line programs are legacy then why is MSFT just now impleneting it as a feature.

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I thought once I was found but it was only a dream



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Don't reboot...
Authored by: kchrist on Jan 22, '05 11:25:30AM
Not to get too far off topic here, but ipconfig has been around forever. It's been around at least as long as Windows NT 3.5, which was released in 1994, and I'm pretty sure it existed before that in Windows for Workgroups/DOS.

Anyway, it can't really be compared to ifconfig on Unix, as you can't use it to actually do anything other than release/renew DHCP leases. It's mostly just for displaying network information, where ifconfig does all the real work of modifying interface configuration (hence the name!).

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Don't reboot...
Authored by: lolopb on Jan 23, '05 04:33:29PM

You may consider whatever you want but using ifconfig only is not recommended by Apple as it doesn't inform all the frameworks of the changes made. If it was the good tool why would Apple develop tools that you can find in Mac OS X Server to change network configuration ?

If you want to consider ifconfig is your tool, make it your way, I don't mind at all, but I don't recommend it, that's all, just as Apple does itself...

I use ifocnfig only for reading things about my config, never to modify it. And yes I consider it as a legacy tool as many unix users expect to find it although it has lost most of its interest as Apple developped a much more interesting system to manipulate network configurations.



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Don't reboot...
Authored by: jesboat on Jan 23, '05 08:49:29PM

It's called high-level vs low-level. ifconfig is a low-level tool - pretty much all it does it tell you the current state of a network device or change the state of the device. It doesn't send out notifications, update configd, or do anything else, because it doesn't need to.

configd is a program that is higher-level. It interacts with many parts of the operating system, but, when it's time to change the actual IP address of the card, configd and friends just call ifconfig to do the dirtywork.

Apple wrote configd and such in order to create an easier way to use ifconfig (and its friends, arp, route, etc.) than opening up a Terminal window and running ifconfig directly, not to re-invent what ifconfig does.

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With no walls or fences on the 'net, who needs Windows or Gates?



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Don't reboot...
Authored by: lolopb on Jan 24, '05 01:24:29AM

Reading this :

<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Networking/Conceptual/SystemConfigFrameworks/index.html?http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Networking/Conceptual/SystemConfigFrameworks/SC_Intro/chapter_1_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001065-CH201>

I'm not that sure that ip agents used by Apple is ifconfig, it's not pretty clear at all.

I agree that configd is higher-level thant ifconfig but, again according to that document, the work done whenever you click on the "Apply" button in your Network Preference Pane (or whenever you switch from a net config to another) is a little bit more complex than just launching ifconfig.

Again, do what you want, I don't mind, but don't be surprised if what you set from ifconfig is changed by configd, which can happen, sometimes...



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