[bug-inetutils] GNU inetutils 1.7 breaks Ubuntu GNU/Linux boot

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

It has bothered us a lot since GNU inetutils was released that its
ifconfig utility is not command-line compatible with ifconfig on many
other systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, *BSD, IRIX, OSF, Mac OS
X, ...

Today, we discovered a nasty problem, documented in these notes:

>> ...
>> After installation of
>>
>>       ifconfig (GNU inetutils) 1.7
>>
>> on 18-Dec-2009, and a routine reboot after system updates on
>> 25-Jan-2010, ubuntu came up without a network interface.
>>
>> Neither powercycling the machine, nor backing off to an older
>> kernel, fixed the problem.
>>
>> Nothing in /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, or /usr/sbin seemed to have anything
>> to do with the hardware problem, and the kernel had not been updated
>> since 1-Dec-2009.
>>
>> The fix proved to be to rename /usr/local/bin/ifconfig to
>> /usr/local/bin/ifconfig.bad, and reboot.  ubuntu unfortunately puts
>> /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/bin ahead of /bin and /usr/bin in PATH,
>> and since the GNU ifconfig is incompatible with the standard one, it
>> is clearly disastrous to have it used at boot time.
>> ...

We feel rather strongly that the GNU inetutils ifconfig should either
be renamed, or made to be command-line compatible with ifconfig
programs that have been in use for decades on Unix systems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: address@hidden  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       address@hidden  address@hidden -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------