Friday, July 28, 2006

Broken base tools that need fixing

Here is a note to myself for base Linux tools that require fixing:

  • ifconfig - interfaces are configured by kernel name not MAC address. You should be able to do either as Linux randomly assigns interface names (at least to ethernet devices). On my work PC I have three network interfaces. I think the issue is the USB one gets detected at different times on boot

  • Fix 'ps' - As stated earlier it does not print entire process names even when it has loads of screen real-estate. I think the whole process could be rewritten and work much better.

  • etc etc (post comments of more)

1 comment:

Joel said...

Hey, the interface names are not randomly assigned, it just depends on the order in which the kernel finds the interfaces. ;P

Still, you should be able to configure by MAC so that adding interfaces doesn't screw up ones configuration.

Something similarly annoying is BIOS assigned drive ordering. When I've got a USB harddrive plugged in at boot the grub device numbers change :(