Message-Id: <199512201103.LAA11313@wbsmail.zipmail.co.uk>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <phil@wbsmail.zipmail.co.uk>
From: Phil Taylor <phil@zipmail.co.uk>
Organization: Lan Systems
To: Hussein Kanji <extant@leland.stanford.edu>
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 10:58:34 +0000
Subject: Re: Virtual hosting (probably a FAQ)
Reply-To: phil@zipmail.co.uk
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org
Priority: normal
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

> : in /etc/netstart there is a mechanism which allows this and is a bit
> : cleaner than rc.local, simply create a shell file called
> : /etc/start_if.{interface name} and it will be called at boot up !
> 
> What did you name the start_if file? Something like /etc/start_if.ep0?

Yes, it will be called /etc/start_if.xxx

xxx being ed0/ed1/ep0/ep1/lnc0/lnc1 etc etc 

If you are using a 3c509 (ep) the LINT file for 2.1R tells me this is a 
BUGGY driver, maybe someone can point out what the bugs are :-(
> 
> And what did you put in it? Could you email me the contents or tell me 
> what is in it?
> 
the /etc/start_if.edx file should have something like this :

#!/bin/sh
ifconfig edx alias xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 0xffffffff

also, since I wrote that I have remembered that I also usually make 
a change to /etc/netstart, this seems to be a bit of a bug in the 
file, namely that it doesn't pull in the file correctly,(or maybe I 
am doing something wrong !!!) after the lines :

# Set up all the network interfaces, calling startup scripts if needed
for ifn in ${network_interfaces};do
          if [ -e
I had to change this (to get it to work)  to
         if [ -f 

I'm not sure why (don't know what the -e flag is)

Also the interface is configured in the wrong order (or it seems to 
be) you need to put the : eval ifconfig_args xxxxx line and the two 
ifconfig ${ifn} lines BEFORE it pulls in the /etc/start_if.edx file 
for that interface.

This seems to be because the interface aliases get over-written by 
the standard configuration so you need to configure the aliases 
AFTERWARDS.

This is probably not the best way to do this so I have copied this 
message to hackers and I will see if anyone comes up with a better 
suggestion.

Otherwise maybe my suggested changes could be put into /etc/netstart 
as this is one of the first things that I do when I set up a new 
FreeBSD machine.

I hope that this helps

Cheers

Phil Taylor
phil@zipmail.co.uk