rPathLinux Talk:NIC bonding with rPL 1.0.4 on Dom0

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Hi, I'm doing some 'homework' on NIC bonding using rPL and Xen. Some email list thread on Xensource (Dec 2005) mentions it is possble, but it may still be too early yet? The following sets out what I have tried. I'd apprecaite any comments/corrections/suggestions.

The motivation comes from the potential use of the Openfiler appliance - meaning NIC bonding would be useful. Unless I've misunderstood the benfits of this?

I use VMWare Workstation to create a VM with 3 NICs. I've installed rPL1.0.4 from the ISO image, accepting defaults, and installing 'everything'. rPL installs like a dream and boots fine.

The following has been my primary reference. Specifically the section 'Configuration with initscripts support'

http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/Bonding

Other Sources I've read are listed in the References section below.

Step 1.

edit vi /etc/modprobe.conf to look something like
alias bond0 bonding
alias eth0 pcnet32
alias eth1 pcnet32
alias eth2 pcnet32
options bonding mode=0 miimon=100
.....

Step 2.

Edit the three files ifcfg-ethX in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ to look like

DEVICE=ethX
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
BOOTPROTO=none

Step 3.

Create a network-scripts file as follows (insert your IP numbvers as appropriate)

vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0
DEVICE=bond0
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
NETWORK=192.168.0.0
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
IPADDR=192.168.1.0

Note: I've seen a suggestion that the BROADCAST=<address> and NETWORK=<address> directives are deprecated, but I've not left them out of the above file. I've also tried without them and get no joy.

Working through the above pages I notice only missing tool mentioned is 'ethtool', which would be nice to have on the ISO.

Step 4a.

Run

/etc/init.d/network restart

Or

Step 4b.

shutdown -r "now"

No erros are reported at any stage of the restart or reboot.

Status

ping to the VMWare host fails. ping to the VMWare Host succeeds from another Linux guest which has the same addresses used above.

Three possible hints?

The following might hint at what has gone wrong - but I'm grabbing at straws here.

Hint 1?

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0

Shows

Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.0.1 (January 9, 2006)

Bonding Mode: load balancing (round-robin)
MII status: down
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

Hint 2?

ifconfig shows a mac address of zeros (00:00:.....:00). I can't cut and paste from the VM, so I haven't typed out the full output from ifconfig. The ifconfig output does match the output from another Linux machine on the same system, except for the MAC address. The howto I refer to above does not mention a MAC address, so I'm at a loss about what to do about this, if anything.

Hint 3?

A Xen email list thread suggests (Dec 2005) a need to run ethtool -k eth0 tx off. However ethtools is not in the rPL image, which I'm relying on the rPL (1.0.4) image for the install and setup.

References

Refer to the preparation section of the following howto:

http://www.howtoforge.com/nic_bonding 

along with reading (2.5.1. Configuring Ethernet Channel Bonding)

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/browse/rh-cs-en/s1-hardware-connect.html

and

http://research.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/Load_balancing_by_bonding_interfaces

Mvdv 04:15, 21 November 2006 (EST)

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