Tag: loopback

Add A New Local IP Address in FreeBSD

Before you upload an internet site, you better test it on your local machine. To do that, you should allocate an IP address known as a loopback address that does not require a modem for access. If you’ve installed Apache Httpd server, you’ll probably get an HTML page that reads “It works” upon connecting to “http://localhost” or http://127.0.0.1” from the web browser. But what if you want to create another site? How to make your server recognize an IP?

In this post I will describe by example the process of adding a local IP.

Step 1: Associate an IP with a Domain Name

If you want to create a domain name such as ‘example.coq‘, add a line for it in /etc/hosts in the format:

<inet-addr>   <alias>

For example:

127.0.0.2               example.coq

Step 2: Attach the IP Address To a Network Interface

To make an address available to internet servers, attach it to a network interface.

A network interface is the identifier followed by colons at the beginning of blocks returned by the command ifconfigFor example:

In this block lo0 is an interface name.

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
    options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000

From the prefix ‘lo’ of the interface name, you can know it is a loopback interface.

You can attach an address, login as root, and run ifconfig like in the following example:

ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.255 alias

This will attach IP address 127.0.0.2 to the loopback interface ‘lo0’

You can make the operating system add it each type you start your computer, by adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf:

ifconfig_lo0_alias0="inet 127.0.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.255"

You can learn more about virtual hosts from the section ‘11.6 Virtual Hosts” of the FreeBSD Handbook

Step 3: Start a Listening Server

Now, you can start a server that will listen on your address. You can do it by adding a virtual host in apache httpd, create a server in ‘node.js’, etc.

If you’ve installed ‘Apache24’ from the ports, you can find documentation in '/usr/local/share/doc/apache24'. In addition, you can find documentation in the httpd site.

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