Phantom Route Showing Up on eth0

[Craig Johnson_1]

When I configure eth0, I am getting this weird ghost route to 169.254.0.0. It shows up on boxes built from just the SLES CD's (both 9 and 10) without any local mods other than activating the NIC's. If I try to delete the route, it throws an error. Any ideas?

aserver:/proc/net # netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
10.20.37.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
10.20.194.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 10.20.194.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
aserver:/proc/net # route del 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0
SIOCDELRT: No such device

[Ivan Ferreira]

That is the "Zeroconf" network, also known as "APIPA".

It's used to automatically configure a network without manual intervention. Usefull for small networks.

[Craig Johnson_1]

OK, but where is it coming from?

Is that a Linux default thing? It doesn't appear on any of our HP-UX boxes.

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

It's a default linux "thing" and does not come from anywhere.

To disable zeroconf, please see:

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/010aug05/departments/tips_tricks/

[Craig Johnson_1]

Thanks! It had us all stumped. I guess we just never noticed it before!

[Ivan Ferreira]

Please keep asigning points.

Have a nice day.