Tom Gundersen wrote: This April marked the ten year anniversary of the last net-tools release. We decided to look at this as an opportunity to deprecate net-tools and provide alternative, and better maintained, solutions for net-tools functionality. This has a few consequences, but most people should not notice. net-tools will continue to be in the repositories, so scripts relying on it should still work. ## `rc.conf` A new syntax is introduced in `rc.conf` for configuring a simple network setup using `iproute2` rather than `net-tools`. The old functionality is still preserved for those preferring to stay with that, but do not expect it to gain new features. The new syntax is very simplistic and only supports one wired network device (configured statically or by dhcp) and we do not expect to add more features in the future. We want to encourage the use of more advanced network solutions, such as `networkmanager` or our own `netcfg`. ## `domainname` (a.k.a. `nisdomainname`, a.k.a `ypdomainname`) These binaries are now provided by `yp-tools`, rather than by `net-tools`. Furthermore, the domain name is no longer set by initscripts, rather it is dealt with entirely by the ypbind rc script. Before this change the domain name was handled inconsistently, sometimes being read from `/etc/conf.d/nisdomainname`, and sometimes from `/etc/defaultdomain`.
From now on, the domain name is only ever read from `/etc/conf.d/nisdomainname`.
## `hostname` This binary is now provided by `coreutils`, rather than by `net-tools`. URL: http://www.archlinux.org/news/deprecation-of-net-tools/