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Re: Loopback configuration problems
Assaf Margalit wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I Have a net configuration problem that one of you guys might have
> encountered. I am running a standalone machine with no network
> card attached. I am using a commercial licsence server (elan ..)
> that will not generate licencse keys to a machine whose IP address
> is the default 127.0.0.1, so I need to give a different IP address
> for my machine (any arbitrary ip would do).
> And here is the problem, I can't connect the loopback connection to both
> localhost and my machine. I know that this was possible on earlier
> slackware versions, I must connect loopback to my machine for the
> license server to work and I must have a lopback for localhost for
> all other applications (mainly X) to work properly.
>
> System info:
> i586 - 32M
> running RedHat 3.0.3
> standalone - no network
>
> Does any one have any Idea or work around ??
Here is the master-comment from linux/drivers/net/dummy.c (2.0.27):
/* dummy.c: a dummy net driver
The purpose of this driver is to provide a device to point a
route through, but not to actually transmit packets.
Why? If you have a machine whose only connection is an occasional
PPP/SLIP/PLIP link, you can only connect to your own hostname
when the link is up. Otherwise you have to use localhost.
This isn't very consistent.
One solution is to set up a dummy link using PPP/SLIP/PLIP,
but this seems (to me) too much overhead for too little gain.
This driver provides a small alternative. Thus you can do
[when not running slip]
ifconfig dummy slip.addr.ess.here up
[to go to slip]
ifconfig dummy down
dip whatever
This was written by looking at Donald Becker's skeleton driver
and the loopback driver. I then threw away anything that didn't
apply! Thanks to Alan Cox for the key clue on what to do with
misguided packets.
Nick Holloway, 27th May 1994
[I tweaked this explanation a little but that's all]
Alan Cox, 30th May 1994
*/
Sounds to me like having a good potential to be the answer your
problem.
In order to speed up access to this address, you should add also a
route to this address through the loopback (so on one hand your
commercial program will see that you have a "real" address
but on the other hand you don't loose speed because things will
go through the probably-more-efficient loopback device).
BTW, use an address under one of the "internal" networks.
>From RFC 1597:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Private Address Space
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the
following three blocks of the IP address space for private networks:
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please update us if this works for you.
Cheers,
--Amos
--Amos Shapira | "Of course Australia was marked for
| glory, for its people had been chosen
amos@dsi.co.il | by the finest judges in England."
| -- Anonymous
References: