How do I configure a network interface for IPv6?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • IPv6

Issue

  • How do I configure a network interface for IPv6?
  • How do I configure IPv6 IP addressing?
  • How do I do basic IPv6 setup?

Resolution

  • You can configure an IPv6 interface with the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files just like IPv4 addresses.

  • The following parameter is needed when configuring IPv6:

IPV6INIT=yes

Address

You can add an IPv6 address with:

IPV6ADDR=<IPv6 address>[/<prefix length>]

For example:
IPV6ADDR=fe80::2/64
  • The prefix is optional.

Gateway

You can add the IPv6 gateway with:

IPV6_DEFAULTGW=<IPv6 address[%interface]>

For example:
IPV6_DEFAULTGW=fe80::1/64

Or if you want to specify the gateway interfaces as well, you can add it:

IPV6_DEFAULTGW=fe80::1/64%eth0

DNS

You add a DNS server like normal:

DNS{1,2}=<ip address>

For example:
DNS1=fe80::1/64

Further reading

These options are described in /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt, you can search for "IPV6" to see the relevant options.

Note

We can not set the link local address of IPv6 manually.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Example of ipv6 working with ipv4 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 with NetworkManager.
[root@XXXXX network-scripts]# cat ifcfg-eth0
TYPE=Ethernet
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
NAME=eth0
UUID=XXXXX
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
DNS1=127.0.0.1
DOMAIN=XXXXX
IPV6ADDR=XXXXX
IPV6_DEFAULTGW=XXXXX
ZONE=
IPADDR=XXXXX
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=XXXXX
IPV6_PRIVACY=no

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6 Comments

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NE Newbie 17 points
6 August 2013 9:41 AM

You need at least this in ifcfg-* for ipv6 config to happen:
IPV6INIT=yes

NE Newbie 17 points
12 August 2013 7:18 AM

For networks which uses Router Advertisements to set the IPv6 router/gateway RHEL presents a challenge if you want to configure a static IPv6 address and not having the autoconfigured IPv6 address available.

The IPV6_AUTOCONF config variable controls whether any Router Advertisements should be received, as a side effect this also disables the autoconfigured IPv6 address as the autoconfig process is based on the advertised network prefix.

IMHO, IPV6_AUTOCONF should really control the autoconf sysctl interface attribute instead of the current accept_ra attribute, and a properly named knob should be introduced to control the accept_ra attribute.

As a workaround, we added the following script as ifup-pre-local (which is run by the ifup script) to disable the autoconf attribute when a network device is configured (script revised to cater for virtual devices like bond0 etc):

#!/bin/bash

# Disable interface autoconf.
# Can't use IPV6_AUTOCONF=no since it disables router advertisements
# completely.

cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
. ./network-functions

CONFIG=$1
[ -f "$CONFIG" ] || CONFIG=ifcfg-$CONFIG
source_config

REALDEVICE=${DEVICE%%:*}
DEVICE=$REALDEVICE

if [ "$DEVICE" = lo ]; then
        exit 0
fi

# Trigger loading of modules needed for virtual devices like bond0 etc.
is_available $DEVICE

modprobe ipv6
sysctl -q -w net/ipv6/conf/$DEVICE/autoconf=0

exit 0
do Newbie 14 points
19 February 2019 5:10 PM

This issue seems to still crop up (CentOS 7.6). It appears the cloudinit 18.2-1 is turning off autoconf via IPV6_AUTOCONF=no in it's sysconfig settings and breaking IPv6 RA.

Whether or not this particular configuration is a bug, cloud-init is triggering it by disabling AUTOCONF. I reported it to CentOS, https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=15833

OS Newbie 11 points
25 August 2016 11:39 PM

Looks like IPV6_DEFAULTGW does not work in CIDR notation.

GL Active Contributor 159 points
5 January 2019 10:29 PM

There is no documented option in this above case to autoconfigure DNS.

JL Community Member 37 points
20 January 2022 4:11 PM

Is the solution applicable to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8?