Installing Net-tools-1.60

Estimated build time:           0.16 SBU
Estimated required disk space:  5 MB

Installation of Net-tools

Install Net-tools by running the following commands:

make &&
make update

If you want to accept all the default answers, you can run these commands instead:

yes "" | make &&
make update

If you don't know what to answer to all the questions asked during the make phase, then just accept the defaults, which will be just fine in the majority of the cases. What you are asked here are a bunch of questions relating to the kind of network protocols that you have enabled in your kernel.

The default answers will enable the tools from this package to work with the most common protocols such as TCP, PPP and a bunch of others. You still need to actually enable these protocols in the kernel. What you do here is merely telling the programs to be able to use those protocols, but it's up to the kernel to make them available to the system.

Command explanations

make update: This does the same as a make install with the exception that make update doesn't make backups of files it's replacing. One of the things net-tools replaces is sh-utils's version of /bin/hostname (net-tools's version is far better than sh-utils's version).

Also, if you decide to reinstall this package at some point in the future, a make update won't backup all the files from a previous net-tools installation.

Contents of Net-tools

Last checked against version 1.60.

Program Files

arp, dnsdomainname (link to hostname), domainname (link to hostname), hostname, ifconfig, nameif, netstat, nisdomainname (link to hostname), plipconfig, rarp, route, slattach and ypdomainname (link to hostname)

Descriptions

arp

arp is used to manipulate the kernel's ARP cache, usually to add or delete an entry, or to dump the ARP cache.

dnsdomainname

dnsdomainname shows the system's DNS domain name.

domainname

domainname shows or sets the system's NIS/YP domain name.

hostname

hostname prints or sets the name of the current host system.

ifconfig

The ifconfig command is the general command used to configure network interfaces.

nameif

nameif names network interfaces based on MAC addresses.

netstat

netstat is a multi-purpose tool used to print the network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections and multicast memberships.

nisdomainname

nisdomainname shows or sets system's NIS/YP domain name.

plipconfig

plipconfig is used to fine-tune the PLIP device parameters, hopefully making it faster.

rarp

Akin to the arp program, the rarp program manipulates the system's RARP table.

route

route is the general utility which is used to manipulate the IP routing table.

slattach

slattach attaches a network interface to a serial line, i.e.. puts a normal terminal line into one of several "network" modes.

ypdomainname

ypdomainname shows or sets the system's NIS/YP domain name.

Net-tools Installation Dependencies

Last checked against version 1.60.

Bash: bash, sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld
Fileutils: install, ln, ls, mv, rm
Gcc: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0
Make: make
Sh-utils: echo