Using seq to generate a list of numbers
Jun 30

Another quick hint.  While working on a server I needed to bring up a whole lot of IP addresses (200 to be exact).  If I really wanted to I could bring them all up like this:

ifconfig eth0:2 1.1.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
ifconfig eth0:3 1.1.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
and so on to…..
ifconfig eth0:200 1.1.1.200 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

Well, I’m always looking for an easier way, so I turned to my friend BASH and a tool called SEQ.  SEQ will give you a sequence of numbers.  For example if you just wanted 10 numbers you could do the following:

[matt@localhost ~]$ seq 5
1
2
3
4
5

So for this task I needed to bring up IP addresses from 2 through 254.  Running “seq 2 254″ will give me a sequence from 2 to 254, I need more than just to have a list of numbers, I actually need to use them, so here’s the syntax I used to use the numbers to bring up each of the interfaces

for i in $(seq 2 254)
do
ifconfig eth0:$i 1.1.1.$i netmask 255.255.255.0 up
done

Obviously in the above example, you would substitute the sequence you want to use and the IP subnet you want to use.  Also, this syntax would put 1.1.1.2 on sub-interface eth0:2, 1.1.1.3 on sub-interface eth0:3, etc.

Curl requests by binding to different IP address
Jun 29

From time to time I need to use Curl to test websites and sometimes I need to make the request come from a different IP address, other than the server’s default IP.  Note, the IP address you use must be active on your server.  To do this, use the following syntax:

curl --interface xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -s http://www.sysadminvalley.com

Make sure that you substitute xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with the IP address you want to use.