NETDEVICE(7) page has the following note: Strictly speaking, SIOCGIFCONF and the other ioctls that accept or return only AF_INET socket addresses, are IP-specific and belong in ip(7). This is not clear. What does "Strictly speaking" mean? The rule that ioctls are IP-specific isn't strict? If not, then which are the exceptions to this rule? How can someone configure IPv6 addresses using system calls? Is it anywhere documented? I have seen some examples in the internet where ioctl is used for IPv6, like ifconfig source code, but ifconfig is not part of kernel and I don't want to rely only on examples.
(In reply to alexopo.ceid from comment #0) > NETDEVICE(7) page has the following note: > > Strictly speaking, SIOCGIFCONF and the other ioctls that accept or > return only AF_INET socket addresses, are IP-specific and belong in > ip(7). > > > This is not clear. What does "Strictly speaking" mean? I think this is an English language understanding issue. "Strictly speaking" in English means "To be precise" > The rule that ioctls are IP-specific isn't strict? If not, then which are > the exceptions to this rule? The meaning is: To be precise [some of these ioctls] are IP-specific and [therefore would be better documented] in ip(7). > How can someone configure IPv6 addresses using system calls? Is it anywhere > documented? I'm not aware of such documentation. I reworded the sentence that you asked about to: SIOCGIFCONF and the other ioctls that accept or return only AF_INET socket addresses are IP-specific and perhaps should rather be documented in ip(7). Closing this report now.