How to configure a flexible IPv6 on an Elastic Metal server

Reviewed on 22 January 2024 • Published on 30 March 2022

The configuration of a flexible IPv6 depends on the Linux distribution running on your machine. You can configure your flexible IPv6 on machines running Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

A Scaleway account logged into the console
Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization

Note

Make sure your flexible IPv6 is attached to your Elastic Metal server before configuring it.

Note

You can find information about the DNS resolver to use in each datacenter at the network reference documentation.

How to configure IPv6 on Debian

Open the network configuration file /etc/network/interfaces in a text editor and edit it as follows:

auto eno1
iface eno1 inet6 static
    address IPV6_ADDRESS
    netmask 64

Remember to replace eno1 with the proper internet interface name.

Restart the network:

sudo systemctl restart networking.service

Tip

The network interface is initialized with the command allow-hotplug by default on Debian 9. It is possible that the network restart fails with this configuration. In this case, you can initialize the network with auto to avoid the problem.

How to configure IPv6 on Ubuntu

Ubuntu uses netplan as network configuration tool since the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. It replaces the classical network configuration with new configuration files, written in YAML format, and located in the /etc/netplan directory. For more information regarding netplan, refer to the official netplan documentation.

Open the default configuration file /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml in a text editor, and edit it as follows:
```
# This is the network config written by 'subiquity'
network:
ethernets:
    eno1:
    critical: true
    dhcp-identifier: mac
    dhcp4: true
    addresses: [ "IPV6_ADDRESS/64" ]
    nameservers:
        addresses:
        - 51.159.47.28
        - 51.159.47.26
        search:
        - online.net
version: 2
```
Remember to replace eno1 with the proper name of your internet interface.

Note
The configuration example above is valid for the main IP address of your Dedibox server. If you want to use IPv6 on a virtual machine, remember to use the unique gateway for the failover IPv4.

Check and validate your configuration file.

sudo netplan try

Activate the new configuration:

sudo netplan apply

How to configure IPv6 on CentOS

Open the automatically generated configuration file for your internet interface in a text editor, for example /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and edit it as follows:

# Generated by parse-kickstart
UUID=xxxxx
DNS1="51.159.47.28"
IPADDR="DEDIBOX_MAIN_IP"
GATEWAY="DEDIBOX_MAIN_IP_1" # The IPv4 gateway is your servers main IP address ending on .1 (e.g. Your servers IP is 62.210.16.123 means the gateway is 61.210.16.1)
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
IPV6ADDR="IPV6_ADDRESS/64"
IPV6_AUTOCONF="yes"
BOOTPROTO="static"
DEVICE="eth0"
ONBOOT="yes"
IPV6INIT="yes"

Restart the networking service:

systemctl restart network.service