ROUTES(5)						       Network configuration							 ROUTES(5)

NAME

       routes - configure the routing table

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/sysconfig/network/routes
       /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-*

DESCRIPTION

       The   files   /etc/sysconfig/network/routes   and  /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-config  are  parsed  by  the  script  /etc/sysconfig/net-
       work/scripts/ifup-route which sets up routing for an interface/configuration.  ifup-route is used by /sbin/ifup, which is the command  line
       user interface for setting up network interfaces.

       /etc/sysconfig/network/routes  is  used for every interface while /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-config is used only for the network inter-
       face configuration stored in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-config, that means only for a certain interface. (See a discussion of the notions
       configuration, interface and device in ifup(8).)

       At boot time /etc/init.d/network calls ifup for every existing configuration and uses ifup-route directly to set up special routes which do
       not belong to a certain interface.

       The current routes can be seen by issuing:

	      /sbin/ip route list

       which will give the current routing table.

Syntax
       The files /etc/sysconfig/network/routes and /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-config use the same syntax. The only difference is the interpre-
       tation of an empty interface field. See 4th column below.

       Lines  beginning  with  #  and  blank lines are ignored. There are 5 columns with special meaning.  Write a dash "-" if you want to omit an
       entry for a field. If all following fields in the line are empty too, you can even omit the dash.

       The first column gives the destination, written as the IP-address of a host or a network. The heading default indicates that the  route	is
       the default gateway. Do not use 0.0.0.0 for this purpose. A prefix-length (CIDR notation) can be used; e.g., 10.10.0.0/16 and also 10.10/16
       are valid.

       The second column contains the gateway. Write here the regular IP-address of a host which routes the packets to a  remote  host	or  remote
       network. You can omit this information for rejecting routes.

       The third column gives the netmask for a remote host or remote network behind a gateway.  For the default route or if you were using a pre-
       fix-length (CIDR notation) in the first column, you can omit it.

       The fourth column gives the name of the interface of the local networks (lo, eth0, eth1, isdn0, ppp0, dummy0, ...).

       If you leave this field empty the result depends on the file you are using.  In /etc/sysconfig/network/routes the field is  interpreted	as
       no  interface  information available. That is sufficient for the most routes you may set up, but if you have multiple interfaces this route
       is set up with every single interface you activate.  This may lead to error messages in the syslog. If you see such an error message  which
       tells you "... this needs NOT to be AN ERROR" then check if you wrote the wrong ip addresses or if it occurs because it's being set up with
       the wrong interface.

       In the latter case you may want to use /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-config instead. Here an empty interface field is always replaced with
       the interface name that is currently being activated. This makes sense because this file is only used for one configuration (for one inter-
       face).

       Note:
       Static routes without explicit interfaces will also replace routes to the same destination (network) configured	by  dhcp  clients  on  any
       interface!
       Static  routes with explicit interface will also replace routes to the same destination (network) configured by dhcp clients on this inter-
       face.

       The fifth column can be used to specify the type of a route:

       unicast
	      The route entry describes real paths to the destinations covered by the route prefix.

       local  The destinations are assigned to this host. The packets are looped back and delivered locally.

       broadcast
	      The destinations are broadcast addresses. The packets are sent as link broadcasts.

       multicast
	      A special type used for multicast routing. It is not present in normal routing tables.

       throw  A special control route used together with policy rules. If such a route is selected, lookup in this table is terminated	pretending
	      that  no	route was found. Without policy routing it is equivalent to the absence of the route in the routing table. The packets are
	      dropped and the ICMP message net unreachable is generated. The local senders get an ENETUNREACH error.

       unreachable
	      These destinations are unreachable. Packets are discarded silently. The local senders get an EINVAL error.

       prohibit
	      These destinations are unreachable. Packets are discarded and the ICMP message communication administratively prohibited	is  gener-
	      ated. The local senders get an EACCES error.

       blackhole
	      These destinations are unreachable. Packets are discarded silently. The local senders get an EINVAL error.

       nat    A special NAT route. Destinations covered by the prefix are considered to be dummy (or external) addresses which require translation
	      to real (or internal) ones before forwarding. The addresses to translate to are selected with attribute 'via'.

       Any remaining columns, if given, are appended to the route command.  This makes it possible to pass special options for this route. Columns
       which are not needed should contain a minus sign ( - ) to ensure that the parser correctly interprets the command.

EXAMPLES

       An example with common network interfaces and some static routes:

       # Destination	 Dummy/Gateway	   Netmask	      Interface
       #
       127.0.0.0	 0.0.0.0	   255.255.255.0      lo
       204.127.235.0	 0.0.0.0	   255.255.255.0      eth0
       default		 204.127.235.41    0.0.0.0	      eth0
       207.68.156.51	 207.68.145.45	   255.255.255.255    eth1
       192.168.0.0	 207.68.156.51	   255.255.0.0	      eth1

       # --- same routes as above in CIDR notation:
       # Destination	 [Gateway]	   -		      Interface
       127.0.0.0/8	 -		   -		      lo
       204.127.235.0/24  -		   -		      eth0
       default		 204.127.235.41    -		      eth0
       207.68.156.51/32  207.68.145.45	   -		      eth1
       192.168.0.0/16	 207.68.156.51	   -		      eth1

       # --- IPv6 routes are always using CIDR notation:
       # Destination	 [Gateway]		  -	      Interface
       2001:DB8:100::/64 -			  -	      eth0
       2001:DB8:100::/32 fe80::216:3eff:fe6d:c042 -	      eth0

       An example for routing entries for synchronous ppp over a ISDN connection.

       # Destination	 Dummy/Gateway	   Netmask	      Interface
       #
       127.0.0.0	 0.0.0.0	   255.255.255.0      lo
       193.102.150.13	 0.0.0.0	   255.255.255.255    ippp0
       default		 193.102.150.13    0.0.0.0	      ippp0

       Note:
       Routes  to  directly  connected network are created automatically (Linux kernel 2.4 and later) as soon as the IP address is assigned to the
       interface.  For example, when the eth0 interface IP addresses are 204.127.235.42/24 and	2001:DB8:100::42/64,  the  following  routes  from
       above examples are created automatically:
       204.127.235.0/24  -		   -		      eth0
       2001:DB8:100::/64 -		   -		      eth0
       and should be omitted.

NOTES

       SuSE  Linux >= 8.0 uses the ip command from the iproute2 package to setup the network and routes.  Please see the documentation distributed
       with this package for more information.

FILES

       /etc/sysconfig/network/routes
       /etc/sysconfig/network/ifroute-config

AUTHOR

       Michal Svec <msvec@suse.cz>
       Christian Zoz <zoz@suse.de>
       Mads Martin Joergensen <mmj@suse.de>

       Thanks to Werner Fink <werner@suse.de> for the old route.conf(5).   Parts of the ip reference by  Alexey  Kuznetsov  <kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru>
       were also used.

SEE ALSO

       init.d(7), init(8), inittab(5), the documentation for the  iproute2 package and the SuSE Linux handbook, chapter The SuSE boot concept.

sysconfig							   January 2003 							 ROUTES(5)