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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!news.electrotex.com!prefect.tenagra.com!not-for-mail From: asutton@prefect.tenagra.com (Allan Sutton) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: Need Help With ifconfig alias... Date: 13 Jan 1996 22:12:01 -0600 Organization: The Tenagra Corporation, Houston Texas, USA Lines: 33 Message-ID: <4d9vqh$35a@prefect.tenagra.com> References: <30F4E4EE.E4C@cdepot.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: prefect.tenagra.com In article <30F4E4EE.E4C@cdepot.net>, Scott Taggart <taggart@cdepot.net> wrote: >I give up - I connot get ifconfig aliasing to work correctlly. >Yesterday, i did: > > ifconfig ef0 www.taggart.com alias > >which worked fine - I could ping the virtual host, etc. Now, no >matter what I do I get the following error message: > > ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR): File exists I see this question come up a lot, and the fact of the matter is that it really isn't much of a problem. In a nutshell, after ifconfig adds the IP address to the particular interface, it then tries to add a route to that address. If you already have an address on the same subnet, then it is complaining that a route already exists, which is the message you are seeing. The net result is you have added an address that works perfectly fine from the outside world, but is unreachable from the machine itself. This is usually not a problem for things like web servers on virtual hosts, etc. I never worry about it, myself, and things work fine. If the lack of a route does cause a problem, then here's a one possible solution. Instead of the command above, use: ifconfig ef0 www.taggart.com netmask 255.255.255.255 alias That allows ifconfig to add a host specific route without getting the error that the route already exists. Allan Sutton System Administrator asutton@tenagra.com http://www.tenagra.com/