Up-to-date net-tools package tells me to recompile it

[Richard Brooksby]

Attempting to run

  netstat -f inet

results in

  netstat: feature `AF BLUETOOTH' not supported.
  Please recompile `net-tools' with newer kernel source or full configuration.

Both my net-tools and kernel packages are fully up-to-date. (Version details are in the report collected by ubuntu-bug.)

This looks to me like a package inconsistency.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: net-tools 1.60+git20161116.90da8a0-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-135.139-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-135-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.23
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Feb 17 09:02:39 2021
Dependencies:
 gcc-8-base 8.4.0-1ubuntu1~18.04
 libc6 2.27-3ubuntu1.4
 libgcc1 1:8.4.0-1ubuntu1~18.04
 libpcre3 2:8.39-9
 libselinux1 2.7-2build2
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-12-02 (1172 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170801)
SourcePackage: net-tools
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-09-04 (896 days ago)

[Paride Legovini (paride)]

Hello Richard and thanks for this bug report. According to the manpage the -f option is equivalent to the --rfcomm long option, which isn't really well documented. Just to check: are you actually trying to use netstat in rfcomm mode? My impression is that --rfcomm is a legacy option superseded by --protocol, which allows to explicitly specify the desired protocol.

In general I can't match `netstat -f inet` with the command synopsis in the manpage. Were you perhaps meaning `netstat -p inet`?

Please note that while the net-tools are fully supported in Ubuntu (they're in "main"), they're considered deprecated and tools from the iproute2 package should be used instead. The replacement for netstat is normally the 'ss' tool. Unless you have specific requirements my suggestion is to start using the "new" (> 10 years old) tools from the beginning.

[Richard Brooksby (rptb1)]

Hello! I do apologise. I spend half my time talking to BSD systems and `netstat -f inet` is equivalent to `netstat --protocol=inet` on Ubuntu. Indeed, as you point out I should probably be using `ip route show`. I tend to use `netstat` because its output is much easier to read.

So this is probably a very low priority problem in a deprecated package, that can only be found by mistake.

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for net-tools (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]