how can you check if ipv6 is actually 'working'?

Alexander Volovics awol at home.nl
Tue Dec 14 15:44:46 UTC 2004


On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 09:27:57AM -0600, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:

> Alexander Volovics wrote:
> >FC3 comes with ipv6 on by default, at least /sbin/lsmod shows
> >ipv6 running. But how can you check if it actually works and
> >is being used.
 
> It doesn't work ;-)
 
> You get link local addresses.  Which are preatty much useless for most 
> of the things.  The only theoretical use I could think of so far is 
> attacking Linux based firewalls from compromised DMZ hosts.  And that's 
> about it.
> 
> >Furthermore where can you 'stop' and 'start' it and how.
> >(Not disable it, I know that you can do that via /etc/modprobe.conf).
> 
> You can't stop and start it.  Once the module is loaded, it is 
> (practically) impossible to unload it.  Note that it isn't called from 
> anywhere explicitly.  As soon as an application shows the interest in 
> IPv6, the ipv6 module gets automatically loaded, and then you are stuck 
> with it.  This usually happens eraly during boot process, and that is 
> the reason you see ipv6 module always loaded.
> 
> IMHO, it was bad idea to enable automatic loading of that module for 
> everybody.  Vast majority of people have no use for IPv6, IPv6 on Linux 
> is still not mature, stable and fully working (just look at all the bug 
> reports, especially for 2.6.9 kernel that has really broken IPv6), and 
> those who really need it could easilly enable it in either modprobe.conf 
> or using config files in network-scripts directory.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. This ipv6 thingy had me really
puzzled. I started thinking about it because I noticed that when I
added an alias eth0:1 it had no inet6 adress (by the way can you also
tell me how to add an inet6 address to an alias).

I think I will just disable it for now.

Alexander




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