What's the best way to recognize a link aggregate

[Enrico Venturi]

Hello colleagues,
I've a proprietary stack which directly links to the card driver, either btlan or hp_apa.
Being that the behaviour of my software must be different if the card is a virtual card, i.e. a link aggregate, I need ti distinguish the APA link aggregates from the normal cards.

Which is the best way?

regards
Enrico

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Usually I'd look if the normal interfaces are ifconfig'd - with APA they shouldn't be - would this be enough for You?

[Enrico Venturi]

Not enough, because the stack is run on an IP address and on a PPA; the stack needs to know if the PPA identify a single card or a link aggregate.

[Sheriff Andy]

Are you looking for the lanscan command?

# lanscan
Hardware Station Crd Hdw Net-Interface NM MAC HP-DLPI DLPI
Path Address In# State NamePPA ID Type Support Mjr#
0/0/0/0 0x00306E0C09AB 0 UP lan0 snap0 1 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg0 0x00306E1DD544 100 UP lan100 snap100 7 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg1 0x000000000000 101 DOWN lan101 snap101 8 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg2 0x000000000000 102 DOWN lan102 snap102 9 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg3 0x000000000000 103 DOWN lan103 snap103 10 ETHER Yes 119
LinkAgg4 0x000000000000 104 DOWN lan104 snap104 11 ETHER Yes 119

[Craig Gilmore]

Enrico,

Link aggregates on HP-UX start with lan100 or 100 as the default PPA. This can be changed in the APA config file, but I don't recommend it.

You might check to see if there is a lan100 on the system. If so, then you know that there is an aggregate on the system.

A DLPI scan/listing of all the PPA's will return that a PPA exists, even if it is part of an aggregate. lanscan removes the PPA from the listing if it is part of an aggregate.

This gets a little tricky in educating your code to know if the PPA is part of an aggregate.

Check the DLPI Programmers guide for the primative. There has to be a specific different value if the card is part of an aggregate.

Regards

[Enrico Venturi]

The lanscan command introduces the link aggregates by the "LinkAgg" hardware path .... therefore it allows to distinguish them from the normal cards.