IPX_TICKS(5)

✨ ipx_ticks — the lil config file for ipxd ✨

okay so bestie, this is a file formats manual page (section 5, iykyk) from the IPX Utilities era, and it's literally about one tiny text file. but that tiny text file? she's doing the most. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/etc/ipx_ticks

that's it. that's the whole path. short king. 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so. the ipx_ticks file holds the configuration info that ipxd needs — and ipxd is the IPX RIP/SAP daemon, in case you were wondering who's even asking for all this. 🫶

here's the tea: the RIP/SAP daemon can figure out almost everything it needs to run properly all by itself. how? by scanning /proc/net/ipx_interfaces, and by asking the other routers and servers hanging out on the net. main character energy, fr fr — it just goes around collecting info. 💖

but there's exactly one thing it can't get that way: the time it takes to send a packet over the different interfaces. and that? that's required by the IPX RIP protocol. no cap, it genuinely needs it.

so how do we measure it? in ticks — and one tick is about 55 ms. ⏱️

✨ the format ✨

the format is very simple, like genuinely not that deep:

• on each line of the file, you write the tick value for a physical interface
• the first field is the name of the interface
• the ticks value follows after a white-space
• empty lines are ignored
• lines starting with # are ignored too (comments, slay 💬)

a possible example looks like this:

# Tick values for IPX interfaces
#
# device name    ticks value
eth0             1
ppp0             7

and the default ticks value for devices not specified in /etc/ipx_ticks? that's 1. ⭐

bestie pls note: if you don't list a device, it's not broken, it just quietly gets the default 1. 🎀

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Volker Lendecke <lendecke@namu01.gwdg.de>

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and that's the whole page bestie, periodt. this lil gem comes to you from IPX Utilities, dated IPX_TICKS(5) — written by Volker Lendecke, and honestly? iconic. go set your ticks. 🌈💖