rtradvd(1M)

NAME

rtradvd — Router Advertisement daemon for IPv6

SYNOPSIS

rtradvd [-C] [-c configfile] [-d debuglevel] [-i] [-p pidfile] [debugfile]

DESCRIPTION

rtradvd, the router advertisement daemon for IPv6, implements router functionality as specified by RFC 2461 ("Neighbor Discovery for IP Version 6"). The daemon listens to router solicitation and sends router advertisement messages on demand and periodically as described in "Neighbor Discovery for IP Version 6". These advertisements allow any listening host to configure their addresses and some other parameters automatically without manual intervention. They can also choose a default router based on these advertisements.

Router advertisement is configured on a per interface basis, as described in rtradvd.conf(4). The "PRIVATE" flag (IFF_PRIVATE) on each interface must be cleared in order to enable sending Router Advertisement packets out on that particular interface as described by ifconfig(1M). The daemon does not listen on an interface when the "PRIVATE" flag is set.

rtradvd also implements four new Mobile IPv6 ICMPv6 message types, two for use in the dynamic home agent address discovery mechanism, and two for mobile configuration mechanisms. These four new ICMPv6 messages are activated if "Home Agent Flag" (see rtradvd.conf(4)) is enabled on any configured interface and the daemon detects the Mobile IPv6 kernel module during startup (see mip6mod(7)) or via mip6admin(1M) utility. In this case, rtradvd sends mip6mod the list of prefixes configured with the "Router Address Flag" set to on, allowing the node to act as a home agent on all the links corresponding to these prefixes (see rtradvd.conf(4)).

Options

-C: Specifies that the configuration file will be parsed for syntax errors and coherency. Any syntax error or incoherency data is printed to stderr. rtradvd will exit with a status 1 if there were any errors or 0 (zero) if there were not. All other command line options except -c are ignored.
-c configfile: Use a configuration file other than /etc/rtradvd.conf.
-d debuglevel: Print debugging information. If debugfile is not specified, the daemon stays in foreground mode. A number after the d determines the level of messages printed. The level must be an integer in the range from 1 to 10, with higher numbers resulting in greater detail in debug messages.
-i: Disable printing the inconsistency information via syslog(3C) in router advertisement messages received from other routers on the link.
-p pidfile: Use a pid file other than /var/run/rtradvd.pid.
debugfile: Specifies a debug file in which to place debug information. If a debug file is specified on the command line, rtradvd detaches from the terminal and runs in the background. Otherwise, rtradvd assumes that debugging is desired to stderr and remains in the foreground.

The rtradvd daemon includes Mobile IPv6 options in Router Advertisement messages when the configuration file contains the specific Mobile IPv6 keywords (see rtradvd.conf(4)).

The rtradvd daemon can be started during boot-time initialization. To do so, see /etc/rc.config.d/netconf-ipv6 for rtradvd entries.

The following signals have the specified effect when sent to the server process using the kill(1) command:

SIGHUP: causes rtradvd to read the configuration file and reload the database. If the configuration file contains an error or inconsistency, the daemon continues with the old configuration database. The syslog file should be checked for errors.
SIGTERM: terminates rtradvd gracefully. In this case, before exiting, rtradvd will transmit router advertisement with Router Lifetime 0 to all the listening interfaces. This can take up to 10 seconds.

DIAGNOSTICS

Any errors encountered by rtradvd in the configuration file, or in normal operation are logged via syslog(3C).

NOTE

The following ICMPv6 types are assigned for Mobile IPv6:

Home Agent Address Discovery Request: ICMPv6 type 144
Home Agent Address Discovery Reply: ICMPv6 type 145
Mobile Prefix Solicitation: ICMPv6 type 146
Mobile Prefix Advertisement: ICMPv6 type 147

Refer to the Mobile IPv6 Administrator's Guide for information on configuring Virtual IPv6 Anycast addresses.

AUTHOR

rtradvd was developed by HP.

FILES

/etc/rtradvd.conf: The default configuration file
/var/run/rtradvd.pid: Process ID of running rtradvd
/etc/rc.config.d/netconf-ipv6: To enable rtradvd at system initialization.

rtradvd(1M)

Technical documentation

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