Options Statements (TCP/IP Network Administration, 3rd Edition)

B.5. Options Statements

The options statement syntax is:

 options
 [nosend]
 [noresolv]
 [gendefault [preference preference] [gateway gateway]]
 [syslog [upto] log_level]
 [mark time]
 ;

An options statement can contain:

nosend: Instructs the system not to send any packets. This option tests gated without actually sending out routing information. Use for RIP and HELLO. It is not yet implemented for BGP and is not useful for OSPF.
noresolv: Instructs the system not to use the Domain Name System (DNS) to resolve hostnames and addresses. DNS failures can cause gated to deadlock during startup. Use this to prevent deadlock.
gendefault [preference preference] [gateway gateway]: Generates a default route, with a preference of 20, when gated peers with an EGP or BGP neighbor. If gateway is not defined, the gateway in the generated route is the system itself, the default route is not installed in the kernel table, and this option is used only to advertise this system as a default gateway. If gateway is specified, the default route is installed in the kernel table with the specified router as the next hop. This option can be overridden with the nogendefault option.
syslog [upto] log_level: Tells the system to use the setlogmask facility to control gated logging. See the setlogmask(3) manpage if this facility is available on your system.
mark time: Sends a periodic timestamp message to the trace file. time defines how frequently the timestamp should be issued. Use this to determine if gated is running.