Bonding issues with RHEL 4 AS U5

[Karthikeyan.j]

Hi ALL

We have a DL 380 G5 Server running RHEL 4 AS U5 2 NIC are Teamed .

I have tried configuring it for Active Backup as well as Load Balaning .

The issues is i get lots of packet losss when i do a continous ping ,

1) Ist NIC is Configured as Broadcom
2) 2Nd NIC is Configured as e1000 Driver .

both the interface are 1000 MBps Full Duplex .

Testing

If i bring down one interface i dont see any packet loss .

PLs let me know how can i fix this issue .


Karthik

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Karthik,

I think your problem is bonding is really designed for two NIC cards of the same variety.

The Intel Card is more capable of bonding configuration than the broadcom.

As a matter of fact I don't think the broadcom can do anything other than active-passive. Paired with an Intel card that might not even be possible.

Now pair a couple of Intel NIC cards and you can load balance.

SEP

[Court Campbell]

From bonding.txt

-2. What type of cards will work with it?
-
- Any Ethernet type cards (you can even mix cards - a Intel
- EtherExpress PRO/100 and a 3com 3c905b, for example).
- You can even bond together Gigabit Ethernet cards!

I am not discounting SEP's reply, but you may have other issues.

[Court Campbell]

can you post your modprobe.conf and your ifconfig-bondX/ethX files?

[Karthikeyan.j]

Hi Steven and court

Thanks fr u r replies .

my ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth2 is as follows
COnfig of eth0 - Broadcom NIC
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
USRCTL=no

Config of ifcfg-eth2 - Intel Pro 1000
DEVICE=eth2
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
USRCTL=no

Config of Bonding
DEVICE=bond0
IPADDR=XX.XX.XX.XX
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=XX.XX.XX.XX
BROADCAST=XX.XX.XX.XX
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
USERCTL=no

Config of modprobe.conf
alias eth0 bnx2
alias eth1 bnx2
alias eth2 e1000
alias eth3 e1000
alias bond0 bonding


I noticed a strange behaviour when we start the applications like tibco
We notice lots of packet loss

[Court Campbell · Accepted solution]

From what I saw, everything looks good. I would probably add this line to modprobe.conf

options bond0 mode=0 miimon=100

By default miimon is 0 so it is off. miimon is used to verify that the nic's are active. This might not fix your issue, but you might consider the change.

>> If i bring down one interface i dont see any packet loss .

When you do this are you trying it with each nic, or just one? Have you tried changing cables?

[Karthikeyan.j]

From what I saw, everything looks good. I would probably add this line to modprobe.conf

options bond0 mode=0 miimon=100

By default miimon is 0 so it is off. miimon is used to verify that the nic's are active. This might not fix your issue, but you might consider the change.

>> If i bring down one interface i dont see any packet loss .

When you do this are you trying it with each nic, or just one? Have you tried changing cables?

Hi

Thanks for u reply

I had tried with bringing down one interface at a time and checked .

There was not packet loss

So now i tried with active backup instead of round robin
options mode=1 miimon=100 and the issues seems to be fixed now



Karthik