Getting somewhere in my samba adventures... slowly

[Peter Samuelson]

[Paul J Collins <pjdc at eircom.net>]
> for Linux to support two IP addresses on a interface (this is where
> my knowledge turns to pure speculation because I don't know how
> interface aliasing is implemented on Linux) the NIC may need to run
> in promiscuous mode, where the kernel must examine *every* datagram
> that comes over the wire to see if the IP address is one it owns.

Though my hard knowledge here is as little as yours, I highly doubt
that IP aliasing requires promiscuous mode in Linux (or any other OS).
I think you've confused IP addresses with MAC (Ethernet hardware)
addresses.  All you really need is to have your ARP server (i.e. TCP/IP
stack) answer ARP requests for more than one IP, using the same MAC
address.

...And even if you needed multiple MAC addresses, many if not most NICs
support some degree of multicasting.  (Usually a programmable list or
hash table of MAC addresses to listen for.)

Peter