iterating over a list and printing

[Richie Hindle]

[Bart]
>>> ip_list.append(inputFile.read())

You probably meant something like this (untested):

inputFile = file('ips.txt', 'r')
ip_list = inputFile.readlines()   # Note readlines() rather than read()
inputFile.close()
for i in ip_list:
    print "/sbin/ifconfig %s netmask 255.255.252.0 broadcast 128.173.123.255 up" %i

If you really do need to create ip_list up front and append to it,
you should use extend() rather than append() - see the "mutable
sequence types" documentation for details.

-- 
Richie Hindle
richie at entrian.com