I have a server with 2 network cards. I want it so that if one of them dies, or can't ping the default gateway for whatever reason, the other card takes over automatically with a minimum of down time. My searches for this haven't come up with anything. I must just be using the wrong keywords, I know something like this must be out there.

At work, on windows, we use some kind of NIC teaming software where they work together as the same virtual card with the same IP. One of them can die without the network going down. I need to be able to implement something like this on the Linux server but I don't know where to look for answers.

Any input is very much appreciated,
Kav

You're looking for "bonding". You create a bond0 device and set your 2 cards (eth0 and eth1 for examples) as slaves.

If you do a Google search with the terms "NIC" and "bonding" (no quotes you will see quite a few hits - the first I saw was a how to for Debian.

Exactly as stated above by jlightner. And MOST of the Google hits are indeed for Debian, but are pretty transportable.
You will find in your kernel sources the C code for 'ifenslave' which needs to be compiled and put into /sbin as a binary, which makes creating the bonded interfaces simple as pie and has built-in --help info.

If you can't work it out and need it for RHEL5 I can dig out the steps I did on RHEL3 which should be fairly close despite the kernel difference (2.4.x vs 2.6.x)

One key difference for RHEL over Debian would be location of network files. They are in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts (ifcfg-eth0, ifcfg-eth1 etc...)

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-...interface.html

That page was exactly what I needed, it had both debian and redhat instructions. I now have it working perfectly. Thanks a lot guys.