NIC Bonding on RHEL 4

[Matt Palmer_2]

also have you tried here, this works for me:

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/supportsoftware/linux/bonding-1.0.4d-1.src.txt

regards

Matt

[Ross Kennedy]

First off. Thanks for all replies.

Dan
Renaming ifcfg-bond0 to ifcfg-zbond0 didn't help.

Matt
I didn't rebuild the kernel after installing the softpaq. Can I show my ignorance and ask how you rebuild the kernel?

Even though modules.conf alaises eth0/1 to bcm5700, messages.log is still referencing tg3 when I disconnect cables. Maybe my kernel isn't what I hoped it was?

Jul 21 12:23:29 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Link is down.
Jul 21 12:23:48 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
Jul 21 12:23:48 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
Jul 21 12:23:49 penguin snmpd[2157]: Received SNMP packet(s) from 147.114.178.59
Jul 21 12:24:02 penguin kernel: tg3: eth1: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
Jul 21 12:24:02 penguin kernel: tg3: eth1: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
Jul 21 12:24:50 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Link is down.
Jul 21 12:25:04 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
Jul 21 12:25:04 penguin kernel: tg3: bond0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.


The insight manager page for the NIC's doesn't make any mention fault tolerance. It only shows eth1 (no mention of eth0 or bond0). I've attached a copy/paste from the SIM page.

[Stuart Browne]

bring down 'bond0', 'eth0', and 'eth1', 'rmmod tg3', then try to bring it up again.

[Ross Kennedy]

Stuart

Removing tg3 didn't help. It just came back again after restarting. Even though I have installed the bcm5700 package, I'm worried I need to rebuild the kernel but don't know how to!

Ross

[Matt Palmer_2]

Hi,

If you follow the bonding link that I posted previously, it gives a step by step method of rebuilding the kernel on a specific platform, RH included. It details using cloneconfig and mrproper,etc. Your are only really adding the bonding into the existing kernel.

good luck

Matt

[Steven E. Protter]

Apologies for not replying when promised.

http://www.hpuxconsulting.com/bond.tar

That is my config.

Hopefully its helpful.

SEP

[Eric van Dijken · Accepted solution]

Is /etc/modules.conf still used in RHEL4, didn't they move it to /etc/modprobe.conf?

Maybe thats why you still load the t3 module, instead of the bcm5700.

[Ross Kennedy]

Success! But I'm very confused. Generous points to be awarded for all.
Especially Erik who came up with the answer (although I did stumble on
the answer on Friday - honest!).
All the instructions for bonding say you should be editing /etc/modules.conf
but my breakthrough came when I stumbled upon /etc/modprobe.conf while trying
to figure out why bcm5700 didn't appear in lsmod.
I deleted /etc/modules.conf and added the "alias bond0 bonding" directive
to modprobe.conf and it all seems to work.
Is this a difference between 2.4 and 2.6 kernels?

At this time
bond0 appears as "Switch-assisted Load Balancing (round-robin)" in HPSIM.
The NICS show up as team members in HP SIM.
TCP stays up when I pull either cable and the HP NIC agents generate SNMP traps
as expected
NIC Redundancy Decreased (Rev 1): Major Event
instead of
penguin: NIC Connectivity Lost Trap (Rev 1): Major Event

Things I have learned.

Forget modules.conf and use modprobe.conf.

Re-install HP softpaqs when you patch the kernel (oops). I installed the softpaq
then patched the kernel and bcm5700.ko wasn't carried over to the kernel drivers
directory (/lib/modules/2.6.9-11.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/net/) until I re-installed the softpaq

This didn't help me solve the problem of loading the bcm5700 module as I get
a fatal error from modprobe. What does the error mean?

[root@penguin ~]# modprobe bcm5700
FATAL: Error inserting bcm5700 (/lib/modules/2.6.9-11.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/net/bcm5700.ko): Invalid module format
[root@penguin ~]# ls -l /lib/modules/2.6.9-11.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/net/bcm5700.ko
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 1293907 Jul 22 12:10 /lib/modules/2.6.9-11.ELsmp/kernel/drivers/net/bcm5700.ko

I'm successfully running with the tg3 driver and native bonding driver
(the HP bonding driver lists bcm5700 as a pre-req so I gave up on it).

The syntax for insmod does not match the HP install notes.

[root@penguin ~]# insmod bcm5700
insmod: can't read 'bcm5700': No such file or directory

Does any of this make sense to people?

[Eric van Dijken]

Makes sense to me :)

You came as far as i did, before i stopped using bonding on RHEL4. I'll just put in on hold until the next Update comes out (or a PSP > 7.30)

Instead of using insmod, try modprobe (not so sure anymore, but worth a try)

I even got the driver for the BCM card from Broadcom (8.1.55) that was worse (Debug info on screen, for about 2 min. Than a system panic)

[Steven E. Protter]

The fact you got it working with that hardware at all shows considerable skill and a bit of good luck.

Do make sure its stable, and is actually providing decent throughput, before you move this project off your radar screen.

Congrats.

SEP