Bonding on Red Hat ES 3.0

[Sandeep Sanjao Figer]

I have HP DL 380 & DL 360 servers with two nic's. I have installed HP's bonding-1.0.4q-1.src.rpm & followed all steps from Red Hat site for bonding. When system comes up, it shows me bodning okay but I have to manually ifup or start drivers. It does not come automatically. Also, I can ping to various machines but also shows me network not reachable. Would appreciate any quick help. I see below status in ifconfig

bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:02:A1:AF:DB
inet addr:10.104.100.171 Bcast:10.104.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.128
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1492828 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:491347 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:96055040 (91.6 Mb) TX bytes:31467723 (30.0 Mb)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:02:A1:AF:DB
UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:992106 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:491344 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:63758923 (60.8 Mb) TX bytes:31467531 (30.0 Mb)
Interrupt:5 Memory:f7fb0000-f7fc0000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:08:02:A1:AF:DB
UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:500722 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:32296117 (30.7 Mb) TX bytes:192 (192.0 b)
Interrupt:10 Memory:f7fa0000-f7fb0000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:196107 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:196107 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:16113522 (15.3 Mb) TX bytes:16113522 (15.3 Mb)

Regards,
Sandeep

[Andrius]

Hi,

what do you mean by "start drivers" ? to start interface or load driver modules ?
Does lsmod shows your drivers loaded ?
Check for default route - I have few installations where default route is somehow missed on startup with bonding configuration. /etc/init.d/network restart fixes that.

Andrius

[Sandeep Sanjao Figer]

Hi,
First of all thanks for replying. Coming back to question, I can see Bonding OK information when server comes up while in Network monitor it still shows inactive for for the both the nic. I have to do either ifup or through network graphics window, have to manually activate. Also, could you send me more info on setting up default route. Also, I have attached the necessary files incase u need more detailed info.

[Andrius]

From provided conf files I see 2 possible misconfigurations:
1. At first try not to use combination of those two drivers: HP bonding + HP bcm5700. For exmpl. try to load your kernel native network driver (tg3.o ?). As practice shows "HP approved and tested drivers" are not so good tested :))
2. Do you carefully read the inst doc part of configuring ifcfg-eth[0-1] files ? As i remember they need contain only:
DEVICE=eth[0-1]
BOOTPROTO=none
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes

Andrius

[Sandeep Sanjao Figer]

Hi,
I did read the bonding file properly & just had the required entries only but somehow I could not ping other machines without IP address & other parameters given. Only after putting those entries bonding driver did get loaded. I will try your suggestion on the driver loading..
Regards,
Sandeep

[Sandeep Sanjao Figer]

Hi,

Tried the options but bonding does not come up automatic. While system booting, it shows all okay for interface & bond 0 bit in Network panel it shows inactive. Only when I click activate it gets activated. Also, somehow even network browsing does not work from Linux box..