ifconfig issue

[WajeehJ]

ifconfig deprecation — cross-distro network interface collection

Problem:
LPCPU called ifconfig -a directly and unconditionally in both the before and after
snapshot blocks. ifconfig comes from the net-tools package which is deprecated and
not installed by default on modern distributions such as SLES 15 and newer RHEL/UBI
images, causing those collection steps to silently fail.

Goal:
Keep ifconfig as the preferred tool for backwards compatibility with older users who
have it installed, while automatically falling back to ip -s -s link show (iproute2)
on distributions where ifconfig is absent. The script must never hard-exit if neither
tool is available.

Changes: lpcpu/lpcpu.sh

1. New helper functions — tool detection

Two boolean helper functions were added to probe for tool availability at runtime:

has_iproute2() {
command -v ip >/dev/null 2>&1 && ip -V >/dev/null 2>&1
}

has_ifconfig() {
command -v ifconfig >/dev/null 2>&1
}
Note: has_iproute2() checks both that the binary exists AND that it responds to
ip -V, ensuring it is a functional iproute2 installation and not a stub.

2. New function — collect_network_stats()

Replaces the bare ifconfig -a calls. Prefers ifconfig -a for backwards
compatibility; falls back to ip -s -s link show if ifconfig is not installed;
writes a message to the output file if neither is available (no exit 1).

collect_network_stats() {
local output_file="$1"

if has_ifconfig; then
    # Prefer ifconfig for backwards compatibility
    ifconfig -a > "$output_file" 2>&1
elif has_iproute2; then
    # Fallback to iproute2's ip command
    ip -s -s link show > "$output_file" 2>&1
else
    # Neither tool available - create empty file with note
    echo "# Network interface tools (ip/ifconfig) not available" > "$output_file"
fi

}
3. Call sites updated — before/after snapshot blocks

The two direct ifconfig -a calls were replaced with calls to the new function.
Output filenames are unchanged so existing post-processing scripts are unaffected.

• ifconfig -a > $LOGDIR/ifconfig.before 2>&1

• collect_network_stats "$LOGDIR/ifconfig.before"

• ifconfig -a > $LOGDIR/ifconfig.after 2>&1

• collect_network_stats "$LOGDIR/ifconfig.after"