peasth...@shaw.ca wrote: > 'man arp' has no mention of a configuration file. How should > arp reference /etc/ethers automatically at startup? > ... > My question was worded badly. I want 'arp -f /etc/ethers' to happen > automatically at startup. Should it be put in /etc/initab or where?
It is very unusual to need to manually set entries in the arp table. In any case, the full approach would be to create a boot time startup script in /etc/init.d/arp_local or some such to perform this task. The file /etc/init.d/skeleton is provided as a template and may be copied and then modified as needed. After that has been copied to /etc/init.d/arp_local and edited appropriately then the startup links can be created with '# update-rc.d arp_local defaults'. But you might not need to be so rigorous for such a simple thing as what you want to do. A long standing Unix tradition has been to use /etc/rc.local for local hacks such as this. If you put the command there then the /etc/init.d/rc.local startup script will automatically run it at boot time. Humans are good about editing files but software tools have trouble with it. Therefore automated software in packages always create their own files which can be installed and removed. As such the rc.local really only works okay for human editing. But it is there and simple and available for whatever purpose you need it for. I would probably go the simple route and just put it there. It is a conffile and your changes will be preserved on upgrades. Bob
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