NAME
rtsold, rtsol
— router solicitation
daemon
SYNOPSIS
rtsold |
[-dDfm1] interface
... |
rtsold |
[-dDfm1] -a |
rtsol |
[-dD] interface ... |
rtsol |
[-dD] -a |
DESCRIPTION
Thertsold utility is the daemon program to send ICMPv6
Router Solicitation messages on the specified interfaces. If a node
(re)attaches to a link, rtsold sends some Router
Solicitations on the link destined to the link-local scope all-routers
multicast address to discover new routers and to get non link-local addresses.
The rtsold utility should be used on IPv6
hosts (non-router nodes) only.
If you invoke the program as rtsol, it
will transmit probes from the specified interface,
without becoming a daemon. In other words, rtsol
behaves as “rtsold
-f1 interfaces”.
Specifically, rtsold sends at most 3
Router Solicitations on an interface after one of the following events:
- Just after invocation of
rtsolddaemon. - The interface is up after a temporary interface failure. The
rtsoldutility detects such failures by periodically probing to see if the status of the interface is active or not. Note that some network cards and drivers do not allow the extraction of link state. In such cases,rtsoldcannot detect the change of the interface status. - Every 60 seconds if the
-moption is specified and thertsolddaemon cannot get the interface status. This feature does not conform to the IPv6 neighbor discovery specification, but is provided for mobile stations. The default interval for router advertisements, which is on the order of 10 minutes, is slightly long for mobile stations. This feature is provided for such stations so that they can find new routers as soon as possible when they attach to another link.
Once rtsold has sent a Router
Solicitation, and has received a valid Router Advertisement, it refrains
from sending additional solicitations on that interface, until the next time
one of the above events occurs.
When sending a Router Solicitation on an interface,
rtsold includes a Source Link-layer address option
if the interface has a link-layer address.
Upon receipt of signal SIGUSR1,
rtsold will dump the current internal state into
/var/run/rtsold.dump.
OPTIONS
-a- Autoprobe outgoing interface. The
rtsoldutility will try to find a non-loopback, non-point-to-point, IPv6-capable interface. Ifrtsoldfinds multiple interfaces,rtsoldwill exit with error. -d- Enable debugging.
-D- Enable more debugging including the printing of internal timer information.
-f- Prevent
rtsoldfrom becoming a daemon (foreground mode). Warning messages are generated to standard error instead of syslog(3). -m- Enable mobility support. If this option is specified,
rtsoldsends probing packets to default routers that have advertised Router Advertisements when the node (re)attaches to an interface. Moreover, if the option is specified,rtsoldperiodically sends Router Solicitation on an interface that does not supportSIOCGIFMEDIAioctl. -1- Perform only one probe. Transmit Router Solicitation packets until at least one valid Router Advertisement packet has arrived on each interface, then exit.
FILES
- /var/run/rtsold.pid
- the pid of the currently running
rtsold. - /var/run/rtsold.dump
- dumps internal state on.
EXIT STATUS
The rtsold and
rtsol utilities exit 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The rtsold utility is based on the
rtsol utility, which first appeared in WIDE/KAME
IPv6 protocol stack kit. The rtsol utility is now
integrated into rtsold.
BUGS
In some operating systems, when a PCMCIA network card is removed
and reinserted, the corresponding interface index is changed. However,
rtsold assumes such changes will not occur, and
always uses the index that it got at invocation. As a result,
rtsold may not work if you reinsert a network card.
In such a case, rtsold should be killed and
restarted.
The IPv6 autoconfiguration specification assumes a
single-interface host. You may see kernel error messages if you try to
autoconfigure a host with multiple interfaces. Also, it seems contradictory
for rtsold to accept multiple
interface arguments.