Re: [gentoo-user] A networking question...

[Steve <gentoo_sjh@shic.co.uk>]

Mick wrote:
> An adaptor can have more than one public IP address (multi-homing) and you can 
> use something like: ifconfig eth0:0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up to 
> set them up (increment eth0:1, eth0:2, etc accordingly).  However, if your 
> SSL vhost is listening on a random port you don't need binding of many 
> addresses to one NIC.  You can use the same ip address.
>   
This is the essential bit I was missing, I think.  I knew it was 
possible to set up "multi-homing" (as I'd seen it on other systems) but 
I'd forgotten what it was called... and that made searching for 
documentation, erm, hard... though even knowing the term hasn't given me 
a slam-dunk search result through google.  I presume I need to fiddle 
with /etc/conf.d/net - somehow - in order to convince 
/etc/init.d/net.eth0 to do what I need.

> Other than vhost I guest you can run a second instance by reading section 5 
> here (but I'm not sure you need to do that anyway):
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/php/php4-php5-configuration.xml
That's all helpful material - suggesting, at least, that there's no neat 
gentoo-specific one-liner to achieve the two instances I need... plus it 
highlights specific problems I might have with interactions between PHP 
in my two instances. Hmmm... I hadn't anticipated that... frustrating.

I guess the other route I could consider would be virtualisation - 
establishing a completely separate installation... at least that way I 
could be sure that no aspect of my 'alive' system could impact the 
configuation of my development system... allowing me maximum confidence 
that I know what's needed when I come to deploy.

Somewhat frustratingly, this seems to be morphing into a considerably 
more involved problem than I'd envisaged. ;)