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12.1. Red Hat Linux and "clones"
Since starting writing the IPv6 & Linux - HowTo it was my intention to enable a persistent IPv6 configuration which catch most of the wished cases like host-only, router-only, dual-homed-host, router with second stub network, normal tunnels, 6to4 tunnels, and so on. Nowadays there exists a set of configuration and script files which do the job very well (never heard about real problems, but I don't know how many use the set. Because this configuration and scrips files are extended from time to time, they got their own HOWTO page: IPv6-HOWTO/scripts/current. Because I began my IPv6 experience using a Red Hat Linux 5.0 clone, my IPv6 development systems are mostly Red Hat Linux based now, it's kind a logic that the scripts are developed for this kind of distribution (so called historic issue). Also it was very easy to extend some configuration files, create new ones and create some simple hook for calling IPv6 setup during IPv4 setup.
Fortunately, in Red Hat Linux since 7.1 a snapshot of my IPv6 scripts is included, this was and is still further on assisted by Pekka Savola.
Mandrake since version 8.0 also includes an IPv6-enabled initscript package, but a minor bug still prevents usage ("ifconfig" misses "inet6" before "add").
12.1.1. Test for IPv6 support of network configuration scripts
You can test, whether your Linux distribution contain support for persistent IPv6 configuration using my set. Following script library should exist:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions-ipv6 |
Auto-magically test:
# test -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions-ipv6 && echo "Main ¬ IPv6 script libary exists" |
The version of the library is important if you miss some features. You can get it executing following (or easier look at the top of the file):
# source /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions-ipv6 && ¬ getversion_ipv6_functions 20011124 |
In shown example, the used version is 20011124. Check this against latest information on IPv6-HOWTO/scripts/current to see what has been changed. There is also a change-log available in the distributed tar-ball.
12.1.2. Short hint for enabling IPv6 on current RHL 7.1, 7.2, ...
Check whether running system has already IPv6 module loaded
# modprobe -c | grep net-pf-10 alias net-pf-10 off |
If result is "off", then enable IPv6 networking by editing /etc/sysconfig/network, add following new line
NETWORKING_IPV6=yes |
Reboot or restart networking using
# service network restart |
Now IPv6 module should be loaded
# modprobe -c | grep ipv6 alias net-pf-10 ipv6 |
If your system is on a link which provides router advertisement, autoconfiguration will be done automatically. For more information which settings are supported see /usr/share/doc/initscripts-$version/sysconfig.txt.