so, the other day I needed to add a static route to my raspberry’s route table. the critter is running raspbian 9 (“jessie”). this version of debianesque linux uses dhcpcd for the network configuration.

you can find a whole lot of info on how to configure the box with a static ip address. however, there are few examples for configuring a static routing table entry that will persist after a reboot.

as we all know by now, you can enter a manual route using the command:

# /sbin/route add -net 10.1.2.0/24 gw 10.1.1.100

where 10.1.1.100 is the router on your local network behind which the target network 10.1.2.0 with the netmask 255.255.255.0 (the “/24”) is to be found!

this entry will be lost after a reboot. in order to make it persistent, you have to edit/create a so-called “exit hook”. that’s a file that gets executed by dhcpd at various occasions, e.g. after the network interface has been configured with a valid address.

here’s how to do it:

edit the exit hook file. the command will create it, if it’s not there already:

# sudo vi /etc/dhcpcd.exit-hook

add the routing command, just as you’d type it on the command line (first line is for documentation):

## adding the persistent route from the example above:
/sbin/route add -net 10.1.2.0/24 gw 10.1.1.100

now, in order to activate the hook file, you can try:

# sudo service dhcpcd restart

for a definitive test issue the reboot command.

if something goes wrong, you can debug the dhcpcd hooks by editing the file /lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-run-hooks and change the line

: ${syslog_debug:=false}
to
: ${syslog_debug:=true}

you can then “tail /var/syslog” in order to see the debug output.

happy routing!