The net-tools 1.58 release contained a bug that made ifconfig unusable for many people. This is fixed in 1.59 and I would suggest that everybody who installed 1.58 should upgrade. You can get it from the usual sites: ftp://ftp.netwinder.org/users/p/philb/net-tools/ http://www.tazenda.demon.co.uk/phil/net-tools/ p. - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org