IFCFG-BONDING(5)

NAME
ifcfg-bonding - Bonding interface configuration

SYNOPSIS
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-*

Bonding Interfaces
To setup a bonding interface you need an configuration file ifcfg- with the following bond specific variables:

BONDING_MASTER
    Must be set to `yes' to identify the configuration as for a bonding interface.

BONDING_SLAVE_<X>
    Here you specify the interface name representing the port network interfaces. Supported are Ethernet or Infiniband(-Child) interfaces.

    The Bonding master takes over the control of these port interfaces, which are not usable for another purposes, especially not for an L3 (IP) setup. It propagates several settings to the ports, e.g. it sets the MAC address (not on Infiniband) and MTU. Also if there is a vlan on top of the bond, it offloads the vlan setup to the ports.

    Without a dedicated ifcfg-<port> configuration file, the auto generated port configuration is:

             STARTMODE=hotplug
             BOOTPROTO=none

    The use of STARTMODE=hotplug for the ports ensures, that wicked does not wait for the ports while setup, but only for the bonding master, which calculates it’s own carrier state from the carrier on the ports using own (configurable) logic and signals it’s carrier when a sufficient number of ports is available (default: min_links=1).

    Note: It’s strongly recommended to change the udev rule to match the ports by Bus-ID (KERNELS=="...") in order to assign a persistent name via /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules (can be done in YaST2) as the bonding master usually sets the same MAC address on all it’s ports.

    The use of BOOTPROTO=none disables IPv6 on the port interfaces via sysctl (and IPv4 in wicked) to ensures that no L3 / IP setup (from ifcfg-<port> config) is applied to the ports.

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS
    Contains bonding options to configure the aggregation mode, port link monitoring and another options.

    Note, that this options are not passed as parameters to the bonding kernel module any more, but configured by wicked via the rtnetlink interface.

    Bonding of Infiniband(-Child) port interfaces requires mode=active-backup mode along with the fail_over_mac=active option.

    The following options are currently implemented in wicked.

    •   Link aggregation operation mode:

        •   mode=[balance-rr(0) | active-backup(1) | balance-xor(2) | broadcast(3) | 802.3ad(4) | balance-tlb(5) | balance-alb(6)]

            The active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb modes do not require any special switch support. The 802.3ad mode requires dynamic (lacp) and the balance-xor, balance-rr, broadcast a static link aggregation group/LAG switch configuration.

    •   Port monitoring:

        It is critical to configure link monitoring by specifying either the miimon or the arp_interval and arp_ip_target options. ARP monitoring should not be used in conjunction with miimon. Otherwise serious network degradation will occur during link failures and wicked rejects such configuration as insufficient and unsupported.

        •   Netif Carrier/MII link monitoring (all modes):

            •   miimon=[msec]: enables the monitoring using specified interval

                •   use_carrier=[1|0]: 0 reverts from netif-carrier to MII/ethtool

                •   updelay=[msec]: link-up detection delay

                •   downdelay=[msec]: link-down detection delay

        •   ARP link monitoring (active-backup, balance-rr, balance-xor, broadcast):

            •   arp_interval=[msec]: enables the monitoring using specified interval

            •   arp_ip_target=[x.x.x.x[,...]]: comma-separated IPv4 address to monitor

            •   arp_validate=[none | active | backup | all | filter | filter_active | filter_backup]: reply validation and filtering (active-backup)

                •   arp_all_targets=[any | all] link-up consideration (active-backup)

    •   Primary port configuration (active-backup, balance-alb, balance-tlb):

        •   primary=[ifname]: interface name of the primary/preferred port

        •   primary_reselect=[always|better|failure]: primary reselection policy

        •   active_slave=[ifname]: volatile runtime option enforcing active port change

    •   active-backup mode specific settings:

        •   fail_over_mac=[none | active | follow]: MAC address on failover

        •   num_grat_arp,num_unsol_na=[0..255]: peer notification count

    •   Transmit balancing settings:

        •   xmit_hash_policy=[layer2 | layer2+3 | layer3+4 | encap2+3 | encap3+4]: XOR hash type (802.3ad, balance-xor, balance-tlb, balance-alb)

        •   tlb_dynamic_lb=[0|1]: enable flow shuffling in favor of hash distribution

        •   lp_interval=[sec]: learning packets to port peer switch sending interval

    •   802.3ad mode specific settings:

        •   lacp_rate=[slow|fast]: LACPDU packet transmission rate

        •   ad_select=[stable | bandwidth | count]: aggregation selection logic

        •   ad_user_port_key=[1..1023]: custom port-key

        •   ad_actor_sys_prio=[1..65535]: custom system priority

        •   ad_actor_system=[hwaddr]: actor mac address for LACPDU exchanges.

        •   min_links=[uint]: number of required port links

    •   Other options:

        •   resend_igmp=[0..255]: membership reports after failover, default 1 (balance-rr, active-backup, balance-tlb and balance-alb)

        •   packets_per_slave=[0..65535]: packets to transmit before move (balance-rr)

        •   all_slaves_active=[0|1]: deliver duplicate frames on inactive ports (all modes)

Additional Information
For additional and more general information take a look into the kernel documentation at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/bonding.rst.

EXAMPLE
Example for a bonding configuration on eth0 and eth1 ports using the active-backup mode:

ifcfg-bond0

        STARTMODE='auto'
        BOOTPROTO='static'
        IPADDR='192.168.0.1/24'
        BONDING_MASTER='yes'
        BONDING_SLAVE_0='eth0'
        BONDING_SLAVE_1='eth1'
        BONDING_MODULE_OPTS='mode=active-backup miimon=100'
        #MTU='9000'
        #LLADDR='7a:b9:14:00:d6:ed'

The optional port configurations may set e.g. ethtool options:

ifcfg-eth0

        STARTMODE='hotplug'
        BOOTPROTO='none'
        ETHTOOL_OPTIONS='wol g'

ifcfg-eth1

        STARTMODE='hotplug'
        BOOTPROTO='none'
        ETHTOOL_OPTIONS='wol g'

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2014-2024 SUSE LLC

BUGS
Please report bugs at https://bugs.opensuse.org

SEE ALSO
routes (5), ifcfg (5), wicked (8)

AUTHORS
Wilken Gottwalt (original bonding man page); Pawel Wieczorkiewicz; Marius Tomaschewski; Clemens Famulla-Conrad.