Hello Users of Debian, I spent several weeks visiting and revisiting the issue of how to configure my laptop's network setup and have noticed that something always seemed to be missing. What I discovered finally was that indeed something has been: on stable (Woody) the manpage for the base package "ifupdown" is incomplete. However a patch had been submitted (see:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=141634 The incompleteness mentioned is that the dirs /etc/network/if-{up,down,[etc]}.d/ , their use and role, are not mentioned in the "interfaces" manpage at all. However it's also really glaringly clear how incomplete the documentation for the "mapping" part of the syntax of /etc/network/interfaces. Unless I've missed something, perusal of the Debian packages (0.6.4-4 is the version of ifupdown for Woody) shows that there's never been offered an update to stable, to fix this. Wonder why? If patches have been submitted (many going back to 2002 or even 2001) why are they not being retroactively applied to the stable release? I strongly feel that documentation omissions pertaining to such a core part of the Debian distro are high-priority. How are new Debian users supposed to find out what the "Debian way" of configuring network interfaces is, when the first place users look for documentation is grossly inadequate? Debian seems to place a lot of emphasis on providing timely security updates: how about the awareness that security updates don't mean much if people have grown so frustrated that they abandon the distro entirely! It seems very much to me as if someone is asleep at the wheel here. In the Debian bug report logs at bugs.debian.org, many users have commented that the omission has cost them hours of wasted time. Is there anything about the functionality of ifupdown-0.6.4-4.6 (the unstable release) that breaks on stable or provides misleading documentation? If not, why can't this be offered to Woody users through the update mechanism used for security fixes? Why do users have to go on these tricky and time-consuming "easter-egg hunts" to find out about this sort of stuff? Please direct all comments about "arrogant tone" and "unpaid volunteers" to /dev/null. I certainly will retroactively. My hope is that even if this posting merely provokes knee-jerk defensive effluent from the Debian Apologists Corp, some other new users will find it and be warned thereby in time to save them some trouble. Soren A. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
