#51 ifconfig can no logner collect stats for RX/TX packets by Linux kernel 6.6 or later

[FyLy]

I have a WSL2 on Windows 11 and it's Linue kernel:

6.6.87.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2

It installed Ubuntu :

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
Release:        24.04
Codename:       noble

Then recently net-tools was upgraded

ii  net-tools                             2.10-0.1ubuntu4.1                       amd64        NET-3 networking toolkit

For now, all RX/TX packets are zeros by ifconfig

eth1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.x.x.x  netmask 255.255.240.0  broadcast 10.x.x.x
        ether x:x:x:x:x:x  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

loopback0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether 00:15:5d:55:31:ab  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

However, although there are two different interfaces, but ip link can see the stats of RX/TX

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    RX:  bytes packets errors dropped  missed   mcast
             0       0      0       0       0       0
    TX:  bytes packets errors dropped carrier collsns
             0       0      0       0       0       0
3: loopback0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:15:5d:55:31:ab brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    RX:  bytes packets errors dropped  missed   mcast
      12733175  173235      0       2       0      11
    TX:  bytes packets errors dropped carrier collsns
      19174566  103780      0       0       0       0
7: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether x:x:x:x:x:x brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    RX:  bytes packets errors dropped  missed   mcast
    9945564262 3718021      0       0       0       0
    TX:  bytes packets errors dropped carrier collsns
      28241290  246937      0       0       0       0

Does that mean ifconfig is obsoleted and out-of-date?

[Bernd Eckenfels]

yes and no, net-tools is obsoleted by iproute2 and retired. however the function you mention normally works. i suspect that debian and ubuntu backported a (broken) security fix and forgot to add the regression fix commit
https://sourceforge.net/p/net-tools/code/ci/ddb0e375fb9ca95bb69335540b85bbdaa2714348/
if you can report it thrm to them that would be fine, otherwise i can try to do so. you can also tell them they missed more of the security fix commits.

[Bernd Eckenfels]

it is now fixed by debian in bug#1106147 in dsa-5923-2