[SOLVED] bonding wlan0 and eth0

dimm0k · 07-07-2011, 11:23 PM

In theory all the info on the Internet about bonding network interfaces should translate over to a wlan0 interface so why am I have such difficulties getting things working... I'm using 13.37 64-bit and have compiled ifenslave as mentioned to be used to bond the interfaces. Currently I have eth0 and wlan0 configured such that they are working properly individually. From the documentation of Slackware users that got bonding working, they did the following and succeeded, while I have not...

Added the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

Code:

IFNAME[4]="bond0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""

All the other interfaces in rc.inet1.conf are blanked... none of the interfaces go up or obtain an IP address under DHCP anymore. Then I do the following:

modprobe bonding
ifconfig bond0 up
ifenslave bond0 eth0 wlan0

At this point, nothing else happen... shouldn't bound0 get an IP address from my DHCP server and be all set from here? Well ifconfig looks right, but nothing. bound0 is set to master, eth0 and wlan0 are set to slave. Am I missing something?

Alien Bob · 07-08-2011, 03:12 AM

I think you will also have to run the following command afterwards:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 bond0_start

Eric

Mark Pettit · 07-08-2011, 06:56 AM

On the (few) times that I have used bonding, we had to make sure that the endpoints (ie where the ethernet plugged into) was aware of the bonding and configured correctly. This was for where we were using the 'striping' mode (to borrow disk raid terminology). I guess if you're using it for fault tolerance only then this might not be an issue.

dimm0k · 07-09-2011, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

I think you will also have to run the following command afterwards:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 bond0_start

Eric

Looks like that worked, however not completely. What I would like is for eth0 to be primary so that that interface is used whenever possible before using the wlan0 interface. If I set eth0 to be primary, I can't do WPA authentication with my AP since the MAC address of bond0 will be that of eth0's. Any suggestions on how to temporarily switch the primary to wlan0 for authentication and then switch back?

dimm0k · 07-09-2011, 02:54 PM

Looks like I've got it! My error was that in rc.inet1.conf I had the following:

Code:

IFNAME[4]="bond0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""

which preceded the wireless section, which was:

Code:

IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""
DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
WLAN_ESSID[4]="Linksys"
#WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
#WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="wext"

Did not realize that the wireless section was clobbering the bond0 section until I read rc.inet1 a little more carefully. Anyway, after making a little modification to rc.inet1 I am able to get bonding working! The modification was as as follows:

Code:

#######################
# INTERFACE FUNCTIONS #
#######################
        
# Start the bonding module so that we can bond eth0 and wlan0
if [ -z "` lsmod | grep bonding | awk {'print $1'} `" ]; then
  modprobe bonding mode=active-backup miimon=100 primary=eth0
fi

# Bring up the bond0 interface and then enslave eth0 and wlan0
ifconfig bond0 up
/root/scripts/ifenslave-2.6.39.2 bond0 eth0 wlan0

# Function to bring up a network interface.  If the interface is

Gonna mark this as solved! If there's any suggestions on making my modifications a little more robust, please feel free to reply!