The correct way to add IP aliases (multiple IPs) on one device in SuSe Linux 10 (and below)

I've always been used to the Redhat/Fedora way of setting up aliases in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts-ifcfg-: but SuSe/Novell Linux is slightly different. I see a lot of hackish examples/bad advice on the internet on how to set it up on SuSe/Novell Linux so I figured I'd make a note of it here.

To do it "right" under SuSe, you modify the main configuration file for your ethernet adapter.

For example, 'ifcfg-eth-id-de:ad:co:ed:ba:be' where the de:ad:co:ed:ba:be is replaced by a real MAC address.

As an example, you want the main IP of the system to be statically set to 192.168.100.1, and the other IPs to be 192.168.100.100, 192.168.100.101, and 192.168.100.102

Your original configuration will probably look something like this:

BOOTPROTO='static'
BROADCAST='192.168.100.255'
IPADDR='192.168.100.100'
MTU=1500
NAME='My awesome no-name PCI \"bus-mastering\" NE-2000 clone $1.99 CPU-cycle-hogging wondercard'
NETMASK='255.255.255.0'
NETWORK='192.168.100.0'
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='onboot'
USERCONTROL='no'
_nm_name='bus-pci-0000:01:04.0'

You will want to change it to look like this:

BOOTPROTO='static'
BROADCAST='192.168.100.255'
IPADDR='192.168.100.100'
MTU=1500
NAME='My awesome no-name PCI \"bus-mastering\" NE-2000 clone $1.99 wondercard'
NETMASK='255.255.252.0'
NETWORK='192.168.100.0'
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='onboot'
USERCONTROL='no'
_nm_name='bus-pci-0000:01:04.0'
IPADDR1='192.168.100.100'
NETMASK1='255.255.255.0'
LABEL1='0'
IPADDR2='192.168.100.101'
NETMASK2='255.255.255.0'
LABEL2='1'
IPADDR3='192.168.100.102'
NETMASK3='255.255.255.0'
LABEL3='2'

Save that and restart networking with '/etc/init.d/network restart' and you are good to go with:
eth0 set to 192.168.100.1
eth0:0 set to 192.168.100.100
eth0:1 set to 192.168.100.101
eth0:2 set to 192.168.100.102

The 'LABELx' settings are just setting the alias label you see after the 'eth0:'
You can get away with leaving out the 'LABELx' statements. One side effect is that you won't see the aliases under 'ifconfig'.

I know you can do this with 'yast' and other utilities but this seems more direct and easier to do on a high latency SSH console.

Posted by Aaron Tiensivu in Linux at 16:52 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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Thanks a heap for the information. I was trying to do this very thing to set up EZproxy to listen on a different ip address than my apache2 web server. The instructions at the EZproxy site (http://www.usefulutilities.com/support/technote/2l.html) only worked for other Linux distros and the network administrator that is having me do this is a FreeBSD guy. Thank you!

#1 Gavin on 2006-09-06 16:03 (Reply)

tCnuBM hi! hice site!

#1.1 nick (Homepage) on 2008-07-27 11:36 (Reply)

Thanks for the info - what a breeze - last time I did this on a Unix box a few years ago it was a right pain

#2 Mark Seaton on 2007-04-20 05:51 (Reply)

Hey man! Thanks for the clean info!

#3 Leo on 2007-10-10 10:07 (Reply)

Thanks!, exactly what I was looking for.

#4 ae on 2010-04-07 11:34 (Reply)

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