linode telling me not to use aliases in /etc/network/interfaces

Submitted by harty83 on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 13:52

Hi,

I have a Linode VPS and Linode is telling me not to use aliases in my network configuration. I.e. using

iface eth0 inet static address 66.228.53.103/24 gateway 66.228.53.1

iface eth0 inet static address 66.228.54.171/24

iface eth0 inet static address 198.58.101.52/24

iface eth0 inet static address 69.164.197.34/24

instead of assigning eth0:1, eth0:2, etc. But virtualmin generates the IP using an alias with other lines. Is it okay to use the above with virtualmin? Will it break anything?

If it is okay, is there a way to get virtualmin to configure networking the same as above so I don't have to manually change it when I add new IP addresses?

Thaks, Alan

Status: 
Active

Comments

Submitted by andreychek on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 14:01

Howdy -- hmm, did they give a reason for not using ethernet aliases? That's the typical way for adding additional IP addresses for a given ethernet device on Linux systems.

I have a Linode VPS and have been using ethernet aliases, that's been working well for me.

Submitted by harty83 on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 14:14

Yea, not sure. I needed a new IP address and when I went through the process of getting one the manager panel made me do something to upgrade the mac address. Then my other IPs stopped working. While going back and forth between support, they said to remove the aliases as they aren't required any more and referenced https://www.linode.com/docs/networking/linux-static-ip-configuration#deb....

I'm not convinced that removing the aliases made the IPs work again but that's what I did after some finagling and eventually they started working :-/

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sun, 08/24/2014 - 15:17

Yes, Webmin/Virtualmin are still using the older method of adding alias interfaces, for compatability with older Debian/Ubuntu releases. However, this should still produce the same output in terms of what interfaces are active on the system ... so I'm not sure why Linode would have a problem with this.

Also, alias interfaces don't get their own ethernet address - they share the ethernet with the real interface.