[arch-general] Where has my /etc/networks gone?

[Mantas M.]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 02:28:57PM +0100, Magnus Therning wrote:
> I'm playing around with schroot and when creating a chroot with
> "type=directory" I at first failed to start it. The reason seems to be
> the lack of the file "/etc/networks".  I created an empty one, and
> that was accepted by schroot.  However, the man page (networks(5)) is
> rather cryptic, so what is this file for?  Would it not be better to
> always have one (albeit empty) by default?

'/etc/networks' lists IP networks, similar to how '/etc/hosts' lists individual hosts -- except it's not really used for anything, which is why some distros stopped including it. I think `route` from net-tools is the only command that still uses the names defined in '/etc/networks'. For example:

| loopback   127
| link-local 169.254
| home-lan   192.168.42
| # no CIDR support, by the way

-- 
Mantas Mikulėnas <grawity at nullroute.eu.org>, 0xD24F6CB2C1B52632