How can I install bridge-util on Mac OS X?

Question

I want to install the bridge-utils package on my Mac OS X system. How can I do that? I can't find bridge-utils in Fink or MacPorts.

Answer 1

bridge-utils is very specific to Linux. It's the way to administer the Linux kernel's specific bridging capabilities, and only applies to Linux, not other Unix-like OSes.

Mac OS X's "Darwin" Unix layer is based on BSD (mostly FreeBSD, with some pieces borrowed from the other BSDs). In BSD-style OSes, you create bridge interfaces with ifconfig(8).

Unfortunately, as of Mac OS X v10.6.x "Snow Leopard", Mac OS X does not have a bridge facility built into the kernel, so you can't use ifconfig to set up bridging on Mac OS X.

You might be interested in looking at the developer betas of Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".