Re: ifconfig link documentation ?

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

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 ...

-- 
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           
Manuel.Bouyer%lip6.fr@localhost
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--