Q. I’ve recently installed Debian Linux 4.0 on my server and Ubuntu Linux 7.04 on Laptop. I would love to have a multiple IP address that I can use for verity of purposes. I would like to bind 4 IP's to the 'eth0' device or NIC. How do I do that?
A.. Let us assume that your eth0 IP address is 192.168.1.1. You need to create alias or binding using eth0:0, eth0:1...eth0:N devices. You need to add range of IP's in /etc/network/interfaces config file under Debian/Ubuntu Linux. First make a backup of existing file:
# cp /etc/network/interfaces /root/working.interfaces
Now open file using vi text editor:
#vi /etc/network/interfaces
OR
$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
Modify as follows:
auto eth0 auto eth0:0 auto eth0:1 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.248 gateway 192.168.1.254 iface eth0:0 inet static address 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.248 gateway 192.168.1.254 iface eth0:1 inet static address 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.248 gateway 192.168.1.254 # add rest of alias / binds below
Save and close the file.
Now restart networking, enter:
# /etc/init.d/networking restart
OR
$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Updated for accuracy.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Did you possibly make a type for the 192.168.1.3 assignment?
shows:
iface eth0:0 inet static
address 192.168.1.3
netmask 255.255.255.248
gateway 192.168.1.254
should be (?):
iface eth0:1 inet static
address 192.168.1.3
netmask 255.255.255.248
gateway 192.168.1.254
Yes, he meant to type iface eth0:1 instead of iface eth0:0 :) He typo’d
Hi,
Thank you a lot for this very nice howto.
It was very helpful
:)
This posting title is a bit misleading, it doesn’t tell you how to setup a range, it tells you how to setup multiple ip addresses individually.
Is there any way to say bind all ip’s in a 192.168.1.0/24 range, starting with eth0:0 or some such? Something without having to have 4 lines per ip address.
In RedHat its a special file called ifcfg-eth0-range0 and has some special parameters but allows you to bind hundreds of ip addresses with just a few lines
Clint,
title is correct and this is the only way to add ranges. Redhat/centos has special file for this purpose. However, you can write a shell script to add IP in ranges. Try something as follows from /etc/rc.local:
for ip in {1..254}; do echo ifconfig eth0:${ip} 192.168.1.$ip netmask 255.255.255.248 up; doneHTH
Actually, what you have described is how to create a virtual interface on a NIC. A side effect of doing this is an IP alias is also automatically created. These are not the same things.
As an aside, I have several servers with several aliased IP addresses on the NICs. There are NO virtual interfaces (e.g. eth0.2, eth1:3, etc).
Hey Vivek,
I have a related question. Do you know what is the maximum limit of IP addresses a single NIC can have in linux?
Umm… yeah, so why is the netmask 255.255.255.248 when the client IPs are .1-3 and the gateway is at .254? Would you not need a netmask of 255.255.255.0 to keep the client IP’s and gateway in the same subnet??