Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Set up Ethernet aliases
When you set up a Linux system's network, you typically assign one IP address per network interface card (NIC). This serves as the primary address for the NIC. For example, a firewall may have one Ethernet interface (e.g., eth0) assigned an external ISP-supplied IP, whereas the other interface (e.g., eth1) would have a local IP used on the local LAN.
But in a situation that requires multiple IP addresses on a machine (all of which connect to the same network), you don't need one NIC per IP address. Linux is capable of mapping multiple IP addresses to a single NIC by using IP aliasing.
To set up an IP alias, execute the following:
# ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.5.12 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
This assigns the IP address 192.168.5.12 to eth0 as the first alias (noted as eth0:0) on eth0. If you look at the output of ifconfig, you'll see the distinct IP address for eth0 and another for eth0:0.
If you need to add another IP address, just run the same command as root, and increment the alias number. In this example, the next alias number would be eth0:1.
On Mandrakelinux, Red Hat, and similar systems, you can make aliases automatic by creating files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/. In this directory, create a new file called ifcfg-eth0:0 that contains the following contents:
IPADDR="192.168.5.12"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
On systems that don't use these network scripts, just add the call to ifconfig directly in your startup script (usually /etc/rc.d/rc.local).
But in a situation that requires multiple IP addresses on a machine (all of which connect to the same network), you don't need one NIC per IP address. Linux is capable of mapping multiple IP addresses to a single NIC by using IP aliasing.
To set up an IP alias, execute the following:
# ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.5.12 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
This assigns the IP address 192.168.5.12 to eth0 as the first alias (noted as eth0:0) on eth0. If you look at the output of ifconfig, you'll see the distinct IP address for eth0 and another for eth0:0.
If you need to add another IP address, just run the same command as root, and increment the alias number. In this example, the next alias number would be eth0:1.
On Mandrakelinux, Red Hat, and similar systems, you can make aliases automatic by creating files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/. In this directory, create a new file called ifcfg-eth0:0 that contains the following contents:
IPADDR="192.168.5.12"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
On systems that don't use these network scripts, just add the call to ifconfig directly in your startup script (usually /etc/rc.d/rc.local).
# posted by MiDBA @ 12/21/2004 02:57:00 PM 
