5 ms·

I'm not sure "terse" is the right adjective. It presents basically the same amount of information as ifconfig (minus the packet counters) and actually adds a fe

by simias 8y ago

I'm not sure "terse" is the right adjective. It presents basically the same amount of information as ifconfig (minus the packet counters) and actually adds a few more flags. It's all about the formatting really. Simply adding an empty line between each interface would go a long way. Also starting the line with the interface name instead of the index. Adding more punctuation to delimit the fields (, : etc...) would be nice too. I mean what the hell: mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000

isostatic 8y ago
So glad I'm not the only one with the same criticisms
- pas 8y ago
  I think the problem is, that these tools lack the extended human friendly output. They work well for those who use them regularly, but there's no `ip --explain`. Alas Linux and the kernel is famous for having very barebones or bloated and useless documentation.
blattimwind 8y ago
It sounds a little bit like air traffic control: "roger dev gbe zero niner alpha one you are cleared for proto kernel scope link strip 4 dash 7 F L 11400 gamma zulu src please copy."
kees99 8y ago
I can take "mtu 1500" part, and sort-of "qdisc", but what's up with repeating obscure parameters at their default values, for each and IP address: valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
- pas 8y ago
  Those are lifetimes for default (outgoing) address selection. RFC 3484 "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)".
ahartmetz 8y ago
Huh, does "ip" also support "tc" (traffic control) commands - qdisc is a queueing discipline... tc seems to be the an earlier thing from the people who brought us ip. tc must have the worst command line interface and documentation ever - it is very hard and very frustrating to use, like no other command line interface I've ever seen. I once tried to use tc and gave up after more than a day of trying, that is how bad it is. The syntax is a word soup and the semantics are very poorly explained.
- pas 8y ago
  ip/ss/tc are all netfilter based things all in the iproute2 repo. http://inai.de/images/nf-packet-flow.png http://inai.de/images/nf-packet-flow.png tc is implemented by packet pacing at either egress or ingress steps. and this is how iproute2 compares to the old net-tools stuff: https://linoxide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Linux-Nettools-vs-Iproute2.png https://linoxide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Linux-Nettoo... netfilter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netfilter#/media/File:Netfilter-components.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netfilter#/media/File:Netfilte... regarding UI/UX/CLI. yes, there's no arguing about it, it's just horrible. no documentation, no discoverability, no sanity. but it works, and it's free :o
- OnMyPhone 8y ago
  I spent a bit too long on playing with tc a while ago. The best I could get it was to limit each person's download speeds from the one internet connection we had. I'm with you on tc having the worst interface and documentation that I have seen from a command before. I spent maybe a few days total on it then gave up because I figured if there isn't much documentation on it, it isn't worth figuring out.
  - sanjayjc 8y ago
    I used tc for something interesting once: I setup Cassandra nodes in distinct docker containers running on a single laptop. I installed tc in each container to throttle packets flowing between containers and in so doing, simulated a lossy, high latency WAN network. The goal was to evaluate how Cassandra fared as network latencies increased. tc fit the bill nicely.

by simias 8y ago

isostatic 8y ago

So glad I'm not the only one with the same criticisms

pas 8y ago
I think the problem is, that these tools lack the extended human friendly output. They work well for those who use them regularly, but there's no `ip --explain`. Alas Linux and the kernel is famous for having very barebones or bloated and useless documentation.

blattimwind 8y ago

It sounds a little bit like air traffic control: "roger dev gbe zero niner alpha one you are cleared for proto kernel scope link strip 4 dash 7 F L 11400 gamma zulu src please copy."

kees99 8y ago

I can take "mtu 1500" part, and sort-of "qdisc", but what's up with repeating obscure parameters at their default values, for each and IP address: valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

pas 8y ago
Those are lifetimes for default (outgoing) address selection. RFC 3484 "Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)".

ahartmetz 8y ago

Huh, does "ip" also support "tc" (traffic control) commands - qdisc is a queueing discipline... tc seems to be the an earlier thing from the people who brought us ip. tc must have the worst command line interface and documentation ever - it is very hard and very frustrating to use, like no other command line interface I've ever seen. I once tried to use tc and gave up after more than a day of trying, that is how bad it is. The syntax is a word soup and the semantics are very poorly explained.

pas 8y ago
ip/ss/tc are all netfilter based things all in the iproute2 repo. http://inai.de/images/nf-packet-flow.png http://inai.de/images/nf-packet-flow.png tc is implemented by packet pacing at either egress or ingress steps. and this is how iproute2 compares to the old net-tools stuff: https://linoxide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Linux-Nettools-vs-Iproute2.png https://linoxide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Linux-Nettoo... netfilter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netfilter#/media/File:Netfilter-components.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netfilter#/media/File:Netfilte... regarding UI/UX/CLI. yes, there's no arguing about it, it's just horrible. no documentation, no discoverability, no sanity. but it works, and it's free :o
OnMyPhone 8y ago
I spent a bit too long on playing with tc a while ago. The best I could get it was to limit each person's download speeds from the one internet connection we had. I'm with you on tc having the worst interface and documentation that I have seen from a command before. I spent maybe a few days total on it then gave up because I figured if there isn't much documentation on it, it isn't worth figuring out.
- sanjayjc 8y ago
  I used tc for something interesting once: I setup Cassandra nodes in distinct docker containers running on a single laptop. I installed tc in each container to throttle packets flowing between containers and in so doing, simulated a lossy, high latency WAN network. The goal was to evaluate how Cassandra fared as network latencies increased. tc fit the bill nicely.