routed is not known to be very reliable on Linux.
gated is often a preferred solution, especially
if you are concerned with security. You have much better
control over which routes are exported and accepted.
gated does much more than the RIP protocol.
At this point, Linuxconf knows how to start/restart/kill
gated but not much else. The magic of /etc/gated.conf
is left as an exercise for the reader.