ninetcfgutil documentation?

[marshallm900]

In the /etc/network/ files there is a tool called "ninetcfgutil" that is mentioned on the RIO systems.  There doesn't seem to be any documentation that I can find for this utility.  Is this available somewhere?  Is there anything to know about utilizing this to configure additional network interfaces, socketCAN interfaces in particular?

Thanks!

[rtollert · Accepted solution]

There is no documentation, and unfortunately, it was never designed with user-extensibility in mind — its functionality with respect to network interfaces and config files is completely baked into safemode.

ninetcfgutil could only come into play, as far as you are likely to be concerned, if you want part of your network configuration to be *preserved* through reformatted or system image operations, especially while other configuration should be reset. And even then, only for interfaces it is aware of (and socketCAN is not one of those).

[marshallm900]

Thanks for the info!  SocketCAN modules are being loaded as part of a custom kernel or added in utilizing DKMS.  So the only thing this is tool would enable is persisting those network adapter settings across system upgrades?  If that's true then we're likely better reliant on scripts rather than this.  Appreciate the info on this.

[rtollert]

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@marshallm900 wrote:

So the only thing this is tool would enable is persisting those network adapter settings across system upgrades?

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Yeah, more specifically, it's the mechanism by which reformatting/reimaging a controller, via MAX, NI System Configuration, RAD, etc. doesn't erase *all* your network configuration. The nominal use case is something like: you have a single application deployed across several sites; each site has a different IPv4 network configuration. The site network is configured as the "secondary" network, and you then direct the format/image process to not overwrite that. ninetcfgutil implements the critical steps to make that work, at least for the network configuration that is known to safe mode. All of this is highly subject to change at any future release btw.

So yeah, if you have your own scripts, none of this is likely to matter.