udhcp and busybox

Devin Bayer devin at freeshell.org
Sun Mar 26 20:13:20 UTC 2006


On Mar 26, 2006, at 9:26, Paul Fox wrote:

>> Hello Rob.  If you are working on shrinking udhcp, I have a feature
>> request.  Could it be made to not require a shell script.  I imagine
>> 90% of people using it just need to set the gateway, IP address, and
>> DNS servers. So it could have a few new options:
>
> what's wrong with needing the script?  all it seems you're doing is
> hard-coding a bunch of actions that may or may not be suitable or
> complete for all users.

It first hit me when I was using buildroot - all of busybox worked  
right after installing except udhcpc, which had the following issues:

	* it required a script, which isn't installed by buildroot
	* by default it wants a /usr/share directory, whereas nothing else does
	* the sample script is dead wrong.  It creates multiple default  
gateways
	* changing the script to be correct took over an hour

So it's a matter of usability. I shouldn't have to learn an API just  
to get an IP address.  I believe it can work out of the box for most  
users.  So it should.  Hardcoding the actions in C is just a simpler  
way to achieve that.  It doesn't require changes to the install and  
is less prone to breakage.

-- 
Devin Bayer



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