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Comment by JonathonW | Hacker News Reader

On OSX (and, I suspect, vanilla FreeBSD), this looks like (replacing 127.1.2.3 with the address you want to use; 0xff000000 must stay the same, since netmasks of all addresses on an interface must not confict if they're on the same subnet):

    sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 127.1.2.3 0xff000000

And then, when you're done:

    sudo ifconfig lo0 -alias 127.1.2.3

to tear it back down.

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Recommendation for aliases on an interface is to use 255.255.255.255 as the netmask on FreeBSD.

For example to add extra interfaces to lo0 on FreeBSD you may use:

  ipv4_addrs_lo0="127.0.0.2-5/8"

in rc.conf

And now those addresses are automatically assigned to lo0, the netmask will be set to 255.255.255.255 automatically for all but the first in that range (.2). Since 127.0.0.1 is unconditionally assigned to lo0, you could also use:

  ipv4_addrs_lo0="127.0.0.2-5/32"

This is what I do on FreeBSD.

The ifconfig man page just says the netmask must be "non-conflicting" if on the same subnet as the first network address for the interface (that'd be 127.0.0.1/8 for lo0). I'm presuming the narrower netmask qualifies as non-conflicting?

Yes indeed!

On FreeBSD at least you can assign whatever address you want to a loopback interface. I'm currently using aliases on a loopback device (lo1 in this case) for host <-> jail communication. The jails get 172.16.0.0/16.

You can manage this trivially in rc.conf and then restart the netif and route services.

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