                                README

                Information about the net-tools package                                
NET-TOOLS	A collection of programs that form the base set of the
		NET-3 networking distribution for the Linux operating
		system.

This package includes the important tools for controlling the network
subsystem of the Linux kernel.  This includes arp, hostname, ifconfig,
netstat, rarp and route.

Please include the output of "program --version" when reporting bugs.


Contents:
  
   README		This file.

   README.ipv6		Notes for people hacking IPv6.

   INSTALLING		Installation instructions.

   COPYING		Your free copy of the GNU Public License.

   TODO			Some things that need to be done.


                          Notes
                          -----

This is net-tools 1.46.  Notable changes since 1.45 include:

 - The internationalisation support has been reworked (see below)
 - Support for extra hardware types has been added.
 - Various bugs have been fixed.

You need kernel 2.0 or later to use these programs.  These programs
should compile cleanly with either glibc or libc5.

The NLS support was changed from catgets to GNU gettext by Arnaldo
Carvalho de Melo <acme@conectiva.com.br> in June, 1998, to make the
source more readable. A translation to brazilian portuguese (pt_BR) is
available and others are welcome!

If your system has no support for GNU gettext then `make install' will
probably fail in the po directory.  This is harmless and can be ignored;
all the tools and manual pages are already installed at this point.

ipfw has been removed from the distribution.  Use ipfwadm instead; get
it at <ftp://ftp.xos.nl/pub/linux/ipfwadm/>.

route/netstat -r do not yet support different AF cleanly.  IPX/DDP/AX25
people, please feel free to add the code.

ifconfig now supports changing media types for interfaces.  This requires
a recent 2.1.x kernel, and many devices do not support it yet.

The documentation is slimmed down.  I think most of it was out of
date.

Some configuration options require recent 2.1.x kernels and/or particular
versions of the C library.  The defaults should be safe for all common
environments but some of the more esoteric hardware and protocol families
may be more touchy.  Feel free to send patches if you have problems.

Phil Blundell
philb@gnu.org
1st September 1998
