IP Address Takeover Tool
fake is a simple utility designed to enable the switching in of backup servers by bringing up an additional interface and using arp spoofing to take over the ip address. Either additional physically or logical interfaces can be used.
Variants of the script have been used extensively at Zip World, http://www.zipworld.com.au./ for backing up various servers including the mail, web and proxy servers. Please be aware that though this system has been shown to work you are well advised to test the system throughly before putting into production.
[ Linux Manual ]
To configure an instance of fake create /etc/fake/instance_config/<ip-to-take-over>.cfg with the following format:
(config file for “fake”, .fakerc)
The SPOOF_IP must be the same as the IP in the name of the file as this is checked at run time to ensure that config files are edited and not just copied over each other. It is very important that the TARGET_INTERFACE is different for each instance that you envisage running simultaneously.
Loading ...
What advantage do these scripts have over using something like heartbeat?
From http://www.vergenet.net/linux/fake/
“Fake has been designed to switch in backup servers on a LAN. In particular it has been designed to backup Mail, Web and Proxy servers during periods of both unscheduled and scheduled down time.
Fake allows you to take over the IP address of another machine in the LAN by bringing up an additional interface and making use of ARP spoofing. The additional interface can be either a physical interface or an IP alias.
Fake is easily configurable and is designed to enable automated invocation via systems such as Mon that monitor the availability of servers. Fake can also be used in conjuction with load balancing mecahnisms such as The Linux Virtual Server.
Fake can also be used as a resource for superseeded by Heartbeat. For an integrated High Availability and Load Balancing soltion for Linux, that incoporates Heartbeat, please see Ultra Monkey”
Yeah, I had looked over their website but I wasn’t sure where fake fit in, in relation to heartbeat. As best as I can tell, fake would be good when you don’t really need all the “features” of heartbeat.
We use heartbeat extensively and it works very well for us. We’ve also been using pound (to the tune of 15M hits/day), though it serves a different purpose.
Thanks for the response.