A question about default routes. 3487

I've got to ask. Why?

There has always been a significant number of people trapped this way, especially when ppp-2.3.6 started barfing if a pre-existing default route existed (the error message was improved in 2.3.11). I complained to Donnie Barnes in 1995 about Red Hat's "helpful" installer that asked for a host IP and netmask, then filled in the primary DNS address as $NETWORK+1, and the default gateway as $BROADCAST-1, then asked the (often very bewildered) person doing the install if this was OK. In many cases, the poor sod had only the faintest idea what these might mean, and very few (even experienced) behaviour when there are two routes to the same destination (without today's advanced routing capability) - which will be used? The dead-tree manual did mention that the user had a chance to review the data before committing to the, but buttumed (there's that word again) that the person knew what they were doing. The response I got from both Donnie and Erik was that the user was offered the choice to say no. I also asked why $NETWORK+1 was chosen as the primary name server (it certainly wasn't on redhat.com, or any network I'd worked on), but that's another ball of tar.

Possibly this problem occurs because of microsoft's use of the 'gateway' term to refer to an interface. The Linux install program should ask for the IP address of the host that will be forwarding packets to the Internet, and then checking to see if the answer is one of it's own addresses (in which case it should ignore the input). The person should be cautioned that if there is no route to the Internet, this entry should be left blank.

Old guy