radvd For Linux

radvd is an open source, lightweight and freely distributed command-line software designed from the offset to act as an IPv6 router advertisement daemon on GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems that have been modeled to be used as IPv6 routers.

radvd is engineered to send Router Advertisement messages, which are specified by RFC 2461, to a local Ethernet LAN (Local Area Network) periodically, as well as when requested by a node that sends a Router Solicitation message. Both the Router Advertisement and Router Solicitation messages are required for the IPv6 stateless autoconfiguration.

Being a command-line program, radvd comes with several options that can be viewed at a glance by running the “radvd --help” command on a terminal emulator, without quotes. Users will be able to set a configuration file to use, parse the configuration file and exit the program, set the debug level, as well as the logging facility.

It is possible to set the log file and a logging method, such as stderr, syslog, logfile, stderr_syslog or none, prevent the daemonizing of the program, set the pid file, switch to a specified user, or chroot to the specified path.

As mentioned, the software supports both Linux kernel-based and BSD operating systems. The latest version can be downloaded for free from Softpedia, designed to support both 32-bit and 64-bit instruction set architectures.

To install it, extract the archive somewhere on your path, open a terminal emulator on the extracted folder and execute the “./configure && make” command (without quotes). After a successfully compilation, you must run the “make install” command as root or with sudo.

Please note that you will have to create a radvd.conf file in the /etc directory before starting to use the program. See the “Command-line option” section above for details. Comprehensive installation instructions are provided on the GitHub page of the software.