How to bind a non-local IPv6 address?

Question

Is there an equivalent of net.ipv4.ip_nonlocal_bind for ipv6 ? Need to start my nginx on boot on such an IP...

My Ubuntu doesn't have this IPv6 assigned on eth0 quickly enough despite this /etc/network/interface :

iface eth0 inet6 static address 1:2:3:4::5 netmask 64

During boot : Starting nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok [emerg]: bind() to [1:2:3:4::5]:80 failed (99: Cannot assign requested address)

I need to /etc/init.d/nginx restart a few seconds after boot to make things work :-/

NB : 1:2:3:4::5 is used here only for demo, i have a valid IPv6 address on my server.

Answer 1

You can simply configure a static IPv6 address entry on the loopback interface. This will allow nginx to listen on the IP/PORT even if the address it not yet available on eth0.

Manual:

/sbin/ip -6 addr add 2001:db8::ffff:1/64 dev lo

Config file:

# File: '/etc/network/interfaces'

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface lo inet6 static
    address 2001:db8::ffff:1
    netmask 64

Answer 2

The delay is most likely due to IPv6 Duplicate Address Detection. Turning this off would (of course) break the standard, but you might try setting net.ipv6.conf.eth0.dad_transmits to 0 (defaults to 1 on my Ubuntu system):

sysctl -w net.ipv6.conf.eth0.dad_transmits=0

To make permanent:

sudo /bin/bash -c 'echo "net.ipv6.conf.eth0.dad_transmits=0" > /etc/sysctl.d/99-disable-dad-eth0.conf'

Of course, the other option is to just bind to :: (IPv6 all-zeroes, or any IPv6 address) and firewall off the service on interfaces that should not expose it.

Answer 3

As it seems that there is no such kernel parameter for ipv6, you could hack the init script of nginx and add :

grep -q eth0 /etc/network/run/ifstate || ifup eth0

somewhere before the command launching nginx ?

Or, as you seem to use a debian or a derivatice, you could try to reorder your init scripts by dependancy with the help of the package insserv and switch to parallel init script lauchning by setting the variable CONCURENCY=makefile in /etc/default/rcS (if you are using Debian Squeeze this is the default configuration).