Re: ifconfig link documentation ?

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:50:11AM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 09:26:49AM +0900, Masao Uebayashi wrote:
> > > how is 'ifconfig foo link' supposed to work ? I've not found references
> > > to it in ifconfig(8).
> > > 
> > > I've a sample ethernet adapter which doesn't have an eeprom for
> > > mac address (or I've not found how to talk to it), and I'm wondering
> > > if ifconfig foo link could help in such a situation to give a useable
> > > mac address to the device before ifconfig up.
> > 
> > As far as I understand, the "link" parameter (IFF_LINK[0-2]) is used
> > by link layer and its usage^Wuse is implementation-defined.
> 
> We can also do something like:
> #ifconfig jme0 link 00:11:22:33:44:55
> which then gives:
> #ifconfig jme0 
> jme0: flags=8822<BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>         address: 00:00:00:00:00:00
>         media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX full-duplex)
>         status: active
>         link 00:11:22:33:44:55
> 
> 
> It's think "link" that I'm interested with (especially what would be the
> difference between "link" and "address" in the ifconfig output).
> I found no documentation about it so far ...

The 'address:' line tells the "active" link-layer address, that is,
the one that is the default link-layer source address for transmissions.
The 'link' lines tell all of the inactive link-layer addresses.

I have updated the ifconfig(8) manual page both with this information
and with examples.  Let me know how I can improve it.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 ext 24