Heads-up: ifconfig address without a mask/width to become an error
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 14:54:29 UTC
It is currently possible to specify an IPv4 address without a netmask/width to ifconfig or in rc.conf, e.g.: ifconfig_igb0="192.168.0.2" phk recently discovered[1] that ifconfig chose a poor netmask/width when none was specified. This was not an intentional change in defaults but rather a bug that has now been fixed by grembo@, in commit 8a9f0fa42b1c and merged to stable/14 in 048ad7a9ef9f. The fix will be in FreeBSD 14.2. I am unsure if there will be an EN update for 14.0/14.1. The bug does not exist in FreeBSD 13.x. Specifying an IPv4 address without a mask/width has been deprecated since the deprecation of classful addressing. As of FreeBSD 13.1 ifconfig has emitted a warning when no mask/width is specified, and the intent was to make it an error after a sufficient amount of time passed. I've opened a Phabricator review[2] for ifconfig to change the warning into an error. I included a link to the review in phk's thread, and asked for input on timing for landing the change. As there seems to be consensus to include this change in FreeBSD 15.0 I plan to commit it soon and am sending this note to increase the visibility of the upcoming change. This will be prominently noted in the 15.0 release notes, and should be mentioned in release notes for upcoming 13.x and 14.x releases. [1] https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-current/2024-June/006047.html [2] https://reviews.freebsd.org/D45585