arpd(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SIGNALS | NOTE | EXAMPLES | COLOPHON

ARPD(8)                  System Manager's Manual                 ARPD(8)

NAME         top

       arpd - userspace arp daemon.

SYNOPSIS         top

       Usage: arpd [ -lkh? ] [ -a N ] [ -b dbase ] [ -B number ] [ -f
       file ] [-p interval ] [ -n time ] [ -R rate ] [ <INTERFACES> ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The arpd daemon collects gratuitous ARP information, saving it on
       local disk and feeding it to the kernel on demand to avoid
       redundant broadcasting due to limited size of the kernel ARP
       cache.

OPTIONS         top

       -h -?  Print help

       -l     Dump the arpd database to stdout and exit. The output
              consists of three columns: the interface index, the IP
              address of the interface, and the MAC address of the
              interface. Negative entries for dead hosts are also shown,
              in this case the MAC address is replaced by the word
              FAILED followed by a colon and the most recent time when
              the fact that the host is dead was proven.

       -f <FILE>
              Read and load an arpd database from FILE in a text format
              similar to that dumped by option -l. Exit after load,
              possibly listing resulting database, if option -l is also
              given. If FILE is -, stdin is read to get the ARP table.

       -b <DATABASE>
              the location of the database file. The default location is
              /var/lib/arpd/arpd.db

       -a <NUMBER>
              With this option, arpd not only passively listens for ARP
              packets on the interface, but also sends broadcast queries
              itself. NUMBER is the number of such queries to make
              before a destination is considered dead. When arpd is
              started as kernel helper (i.e. with app_solicit enabled in
              sysctl or even with option -k) without this option and
              still did not learn enough information, you can observe 1
              second gaps in service. Not fatal, but not good.

       -k     Suppress sending broadcast queries by the kernel. This
              option only makes sense together with option -a.

       -n <TIME>
              Specifies the timeout of the negative cache. When
              resolution fails, arpd suppresses further attempts to
              resolve for this period. This option only makes sense
              together with option '-k'. This timeout should not be too
              much longer than the boot time of a typical host not
              supporting gratuitous ARP. Default value is 60 seconds.

       -p <TIME>
              The time to wait in seconds between polling attempts to
              the kernel ARP table. TIME may be a floating point number.
              The default value is 30.

       -R <RATE>
              Maximal steady rate of broadcasts sent by arpd in packets
              per second. Default value is 1.

       -B <NUMBER>
              The number of broadcasts sent by arpd back to back.
              Default value is 3. Together with the -R option, this
              option ensures that the number of ARP queries that are
              broadcast does not exceed B+R*T over any interval of time
              T.

       <INTERFACES> is a list of names of networking interfaces to
       watch. If no interfaces are given, arpd monitors all the
       interfaces. In this case arpd does not adjust sysctl parameters,
       it is assumed that the user does this himself after arpd is
       started.

SIGNALS         top

       When arpd receives a SIGINT or SIGTERM signal, it exits
       gracefully, syncing the database and restoring adjusted sysctl
       parameters. On a SIGHUP it syncs the database to disk. With
       SIGUSR1 it sends some statistics to syslog. The effect of any
       other signals is undefined. In particular, they may corrupt the
       database and leave the sysctl parameters in an unpredictable
       state.

NOTE         top

       In order for arpd to be able to serve as ARP resolver, the kernel
       must be compiled with the option CONFIG_ARPD and, in the case
       when interface list in not given on command line, variable
       app_solicit on interfaces of interest should be in
       /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/*. If this is not made arpd still
       collects gratuitous ARP information in its database.

EXAMPLES         top

       arpd -b /var/tmp/arpd.db
              Start arpd to collect gratuitous ARP, but not messing with
              kernel functionality.

       killall arpd ; arpd -l -b /var/tmp/arpd.db
              Look at result after some time.

       arpd -b /var/tmp/arpd.db -a 1 eth0 eth1
              Enable kernel helper, leaving leading role to kernel.

       arpd -b /var/tmp/arpd.db -a 3 -k eth0 eth1
              Completely replace kernel resolution on interfaces eth0
              and eth1. In this case the kernel still does unicast
              probing to validate entries, but all the broadcast
              activity is suppressed and made under authority of arpd.

       This is the mode in which arpd normally is supposed to work. It
       is not the default to prevent occasional enabling of too
       aggressive a mode.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the iproute2 (utilities for controlling
       TCP/IP networking and traffic) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/iproute2⟩.
       If you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       netdev@vger.kernel.org, shemminger@osdl.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/iproute2/iproute2.git⟩ on
       2023-12-22.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                              28 June, 2007                      ARPD(8)

Pages that refer to this page: arp(7)