IPv6 address disappeared from interface

[Prabhu Hariharan]

Hi,

I'm using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 4) version.
If an interface is configured with IPv6 global addresses and it made DOWN,
then all the ipv6 addresses gets removed.  Even if the interface back to UP,
those global addresses are not coming back and needs to be reconfigured
manually.  Is this an expected behavior ?


[root at lnx213-42 ~]# ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:5E:FA:BC:D2
          inet addr:10.72.213.42  Bcast:10.72.213.255   Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: 3ffe:81d0:201:109::88/0 Scope:Global      <========
global ipv6 address
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:5eff:fefa:bcd2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:262 (262.0 b)
          Interrupt:169 Memory:ce000000-ce011100

[root at lnx213-42 ~]#
[root at lnx213-42 ~]# ifconfig eth1 down
[root at lnx213-42 ~]# ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:5E:FA:BC:D2
          inet addr:10.72.213.42  Bcast:10.72.213.255  Mask: 255.255.255.0
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:262 (262.0 b)
          Interrupt:169 Memory:ce000000-ce011100

[root at lnx213-42 ~]#
[root at lnx213-42 ~]# ifconfig eth1 up
[root at lnx213-42 ~]# ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:5E:FA:BC:D2
          inet addr:10.72.213.42  Bcast:10.72.213.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:5eff:fefa:bcd2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:169 Memory:ce000000-ce011100

[root at lnx213-42 ~]#
[root at lnx213-42 ~]# cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 4)
Kernel \r on an \m
 [root at lnx213-42 ~]# uname -a
Linux lnx213-42 2.6.9-42.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jul 12 23:27:17 EDT 2006 i686 i686
i386 GNU/Linux
[root at lnx213-42 ~]#

Regards,
Prabhu H