UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I am in desperate need of an answer to this question. I have looked everywhere (even the man pages) and found very little.

Solaris has the concept of "plumbing" a network interface. What does this mean?

I would be really greatful to whoever could help me answer this question. I am so lost...thanx in advance!!

-John

Short answer:

The plumb argument to the ifconfig command is for dynamically activating a network interface without rebooting the system.

Long answer:

If you are configuring a network interface for the first time, you would first physically add the NIC to the machine and perform a reconfiguration boot. You would then add an IP/interface name in /etc/inet/hosts, and create a
/etc/hostname.<interface istance> file with the interface name in it. <interface names> above is built from the interface type and the instance number of that type.

For example:

On Sun Ultra boxes, the 10/100 interfaces are of type hme. If you are adding the first interface the file would be /etc/hostname.hme0. If you wanted the interface name to be myhostname, you would put the word myhostname in /etc/hostname.hme0 along with a corresponding IP/interface name entry in /etc/inet/hosts. You would then reboot to add the interface.

If you wanted to configure an interface without rebooting the machine (you would still have to add the NIC and perform a reconfiguration boot first), you can use

ifconfig hme0 plumb

(hme0 should be replaced with the proper interface name).
This will activate the interface and allow you to configure the IP, netmask, broadcast, etc. using ifconfig.