The method that I pointed out in the addendum to my first post in this thread *should* suffice if you are wanting to resolve the default external IP address of the machine - But I do agree, there is a great amount of 'grey area' on this question given the number of available configurations and methods of interface.

I don't however agree with the concept of parsing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* - For starters, this is very much a Red Hat (and variant) locale for network configurations, *not* a general *NIX location pragma. Further to this, the idea of relying on text files generated outside of the real scope of the program makes me very nervous - I have rambled on this concept previously and as such won't repeat myself here.

Suffice to say, if you are going to rely on *any* external source, consider it tainted and evil (-T, -T and -T) until proven otherwise - And even then treat it with care. If I had to rely on an external program source, then I would be looking directly at /sbin/ifconfig (the path of which should be hard-coded into the program, not drawn from an alternate configuration file) and parsing the output of that.

Just my random thoughts on the matter

 

Ooohhh, Rob no beer function well without!

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