lanscan and ifconfig: diferent information?

[Alba]

Hello,

I'm using HP-UX 11.11.
When I execute lanscan one of the lines is:

1/0/4/1/0/6/0 0x00306E5E59DC 3 UP lan3 snap3 1 ETHER Yes 119

And when I execute "ifconfig lan3" the output is
ifconfig: no such interface

But in another server with the same configuration and hardware, when I execute "ifconfig lan3" the output is:

# ifconfig lan3
lan3: flags=842
inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0

I was expecting the same output in the first server, could you please tell me why could be the reason of the message "ifconfig: no such interface" even when landscan shows it?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Regards.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

In the first server, "ifconfig lan3 plumb" has not been executed, but on the second, it has been done.

The "ifconfig plumb" command is the very first thing in the procedure of "cold-starting" a network interface. It is done automatically in some situations:
- if /etc/rc.config.d/netconf has any mention of a network interface, the system startup scripts will automatically plumb that interface.
- if the interface has been configured as a ServiceGuard network failover interface, ServiceGuard will auto-plumb the interface whenever necessary (maybe when ServiceGuard starts, so that SG can monitor the connectivity of that interface).

Or maybe the second server has originally had the lan3 interface configured with some IP address, and it's been (manually?) unconfigured since then. In this case, whoever/whatever has unconfigured the interface has left it in the plumbed state. In this case, if the second server would be rebooted, it might start behaving like the first machine.

MK

[Alba]

Thanks a lot for your help.
That was the problem.

Regards,

[rick jones]

Lanscan shows devices/network cards/whatnot - stuff operating at "layer 2" of the 7 layer stack (or nine layer if you ascribe to: https://secure.isc.org/index.pl?/store/t-shirt/ (scroll to the bottom) Basically DLPI and below.

Ifconfig shows "interfaces" known to the transport - ie IP and above. As already mentioned, on the system where you get the no such interface the transport has not yet "learned" of the interface - the IP and ARP saps have not been bound by IP/ARP to the driver.