Managing Network Bonding Devices

Start the graphical version of YaST, or run the command yast2 to start YaST in text mode.

Select System › Network Settings.

Select Add and change the Device Type to Bonding.

Select Next to open the Network Card Setup menu.

In the Address tab, select how to assign an IP address to the bonded device:

In the Bond Ports tab, select the network interfaces to include in the bonded device by activating the check boxes.

From the Bond Driver Options drop-down box, choose a bonding mode. The default mode is active-backup.

Do not remove miimon=100. Without this parameter, data integrity is not checked regularly.

Select Next.

If you are prompted to adapt the existing configuration for bonding, select Continue.

Select OK to create the bonded device.

Select Quit or press F9 to close YaST.

Create a configuration file named /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-bond0. If you need more than one bonded device, give them ascending numbers. For more information, see man ifcfg, man ifcfg-bonding, and /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template.

In the configuration file, define the following parameters:

STARTMODE=MODE1
BOOTPROTO=IP_ASSIGNMENT2
IPADDR=IPv4_ADDRESS3
IPADDR6=IPv6_ADDRESS3

BONDING_MASTER="yes"4

BONDING_SLAVE0="FIRST_DEVICE_NAME"5
BONDING_SLAVE1="SECOND_DEVICE_NAME"5

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=BONDING_MODE6 miimon=100"7

STARTMODE=auto
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR="192.168.1.2/24"
IPADDR6="fd00:deca:fbad:50::2/64"

BONDING_MASTER="yes"

BONDING_SLAVE0="eth0"
BONDING_SLAVE1="eth1"

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS="mode=802.3ad miimon=100"

Back up the existing ifcfg files for the bond member interfaces, in case you need to restore them later.

Adjust the ifcfg files for both bond member interfaces so that they contain only the following content:

BOOTPROTO='none' 1
STARTMODE='hotplug' 2

Check if everything is included in Wicked's configuration file:

> sudo wicked show-config

Start the bonded device:

> sudo wicked ifup all bond0

If you need additional debug information, use the option --debug all after the all subcommand.

Do not use systemctl to start or stop the bonded device. Always use the wicked command.

Check the status of the bonded device:

Each command shows a slightly different view depending on your needs.

Start the graphical version of YaST, or run the command yast2 to start YaST in text mode.

Select System › Network Settings. The Overview tab shows the existing devices. If devices are already configured in a bond, this is stated in the Note column.

Select one of the bond members, then select Edit. The Network Card Setup menu opens.

Switch to the General tab.

Under Udev rules, select Change. A dialog box opens.

In the dialog box, choose the BusID option, then select OK.

Make sure that Activate device is set to On Hotplug.

Select Next to return to the Network Settings menu. When you select the bond member now, the bottom pane shows the device's details, including the bus ID.

Repeat Step 3 to Step 8 for all bond members.

Select OK to confirm your changes.

Select Quit or press F9 to close YaST.

Check that the bond members are configured with BOOTPROTO=none and STARTMODE=hotplug. If you configured the bonded device with YaST, this is the default setting.

List the hardware information for the network interfaces. You can use grep to show only the information required for this procedure:

> sudo hwinfo --netcard | grep -E "SysFS BusID|Device File"
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:17.0
  Device File: eth0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:19.0
  Device File: eth1

For each bond member, make a note of the associated SysFS BusID.

Open the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. For each bond member, change the value of KERNELS to match the SysFS BusID from the previous step. For example:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", KERNELS=="0000:00:17.0",
ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", KERNELS=="0000:00:19.0",
ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

This configures the udev rules to match the device by bus ID instead of by MAC address, allowing the bond to detect a new device in the same slot but with a different MAC address.