How do I set the source address on a multi-homed host?

[Daniela]

On Sunday 13 February 2005 09:37, Jan Grant wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Feb 2005, Daniela wrote:
> > Yes, this happens when I connect from my machine (which functions as a
> > router with NAT to allow the other LAN machines connect to the internet)
> > to another LAN machine. When the router establishes a connection to
> > another point in the intranet, the source address used is my official IP,
> > and not 10.0.0.1, which is the intranet IP of the router.
> > In other words, I want the source address to be 10.0.0.1 on every
> > outgoing connection where the destination is inside my intranet.
>
> Assuming you haven't munged the internal IP address to hide it, and with
> all due deference to the FreeBSD "mechanism, not policy" mantra: no, you
> don't want to do this. The 10.0.0.0/8 block of addresses is explicitly
> for private use and is not routable on the internet.
>
> If your firewall is causing problems with this setup, you might need to
> re-examine your firewall settings.
>
> Having said that: technically, you specify source addresses for
> connections by calling bind(2) prior to calling connect(2). If you fail
> to do this, the operating system will select a source IP address for
> you. This'll often be the IP of the outgoing interface.

Well, if the OS selects the source IP, can't I just modify the code that 
selects it? Will this work all the time, or just when the application lets 
the OS select an address for it?

> Unless your particular application explicitly supports the selection of
> source addresses, you're mostly out of luck. For instance, ping(8)
> supports this (see the -S option).
>
> Cheers,
> jan