RTADVD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual RTADVD(8)
NAME
rtadvd -- router advertisement daemon
SYNOPSIS
rtadvd [-DdfMRs] [-c configfile] interface ...
DESCRIPTION
rtadvd sends router advertisement packets to the specified interfaces.
The program will daemonize itself on invocation. It will then send router advertisement packets periodically, as well as in response to
router solicitation messages sent by end hosts.
Router advertisements can be configured on a per-interface basis, as described in rtadvd.conf(5).
If there is no configuration file entry for an interface, or if the configuration file does not exist at all, rtadvd sets all the parameters
to their default values. In particular, rtadvd reads all the interface routes from the routing table and advertises them as on-link pre-
fixes.
rtadvd also watches the routing table. If an interface direct route is added on an advertising interface and no static prefixes are speci-
fied by the configuration file, rtadvd adds the corresponding prefix to its advertising list.
Similarly, when an interface direct route is deleted, rtadvd will start advertising the prefixes with zero valid and preferred lifetimes to
help the receiving hosts switch to a new prefix when renumbering. Note, however, that the zero valid lifetime cannot invalidate the autocon-
figured addresses at a receiving host immediately. According to the specification, the host will retain the address for a certain period,
which will typically be two hours. The zero lifetimes rather intend to make the address deprecated, indicating that a new non-deprecated
address should be used as the source address of a new connection. This behavior will last for two hours. Then rtadvd will completely remove
the prefix from the advertising list, and succeeding advertisements will not contain the prefix information.
Moreover, if the status of an advertising interface changes, rtadvd will start or stop sending router advertisements according to the latest
status.
The -s option may be used to disable this behavior; rtadvd will not watch the routing table and the whole functionality described above will
be suppressed.
Basically, hosts MUST NOT send Router Advertisement messages at any time (RFC 2461, Section 6.2.3). However, it would sometimes be useful to
allow hosts to advertise some parameters such as prefix information and link MTU. Thus, rtadvd can be invoked if router lifetime is explic-
itly set to zero on every advertising interface.
The command line options are:
-c configfile
Specify an alternate location, configfile, for the configuration file. By default, /etc/rtadvd.conf is used.
-D Even more debugging information than that offered by the -d option is printed.
-d Print debugging information.
-f Foreground mode (useful when debugging). Log messages will be dumped to stderr when this option is specified.
-M Specify an interface to join the all-routers site-local multicast group. By default, rtadvd tries to join the first advertising
interface appearing on the command line. This option has meaning only with the -R option, which enables routing renumbering protocol
support.
-R Accept router renumbering requests. If you enable it, an ipsec(4) setup is suggested for security reasons. This option is currently
disabled, and is ignored by rtadvd with a warning message.
-s Do not add or delete prefixes dynamically. Only statically configured prefixes, if any, will be advertised.
Upon receipt of signal SIGUSR1, rtadvd will dump the current internal state into /var/run/rtadvd.dump.
Use SIGTERM to kill rtadvd gracefully. In this case, rtadvd will transmit router advertisement with router lifetime 0 to all the interfaces
(in accordance with RFC 2461 6.2.5).
FILES
/etc/rtadvd.conf The default configuration file.
/var/run/rtadvd.pid Contains the PID of the currently running rtadvd.
/var/run/rtadvd.dump The file in which rtadvd dumps its internal state.
EXIT STATUS
The rtadvd utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
rtadvd.conf(5), rtsol(8)
HISTORY
The rtadvd command first appeared in the WIDE Hydrangea IPv6 protocol stack kit.
BUGS
There used to be some text that recommended users not to let rtadvd advertise Router Advertisement messages on an upstream link to avoid
undesirable icmp6(4) redirect messages. However, based on later discussion in the IETF IPng working group, all routers should rather adver-
tise the messages regardless of the network topology, in order to ensure reachability.
BSD
March 5, 2006 BSD