Posts Tagged ‘default gateway’

How to configure bond0 bonding and network bridging for KVM Virtual machines on Redhat / CentOS / Fedora Linux

Tuesday, February 16th, 2021

configure-bond0-bonding-channel-with-bridges-on-hypervisor-host-for-guest-KVM-virtual-machines-howto-sample-Hypervisor-Virtual-machines-pic
 1. Intro to Redhat RPM based distro /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/* config vars shortly explained

On RPM based Linux distributions configuring network has a very specific structure. As a sysadmin just recently I had a task to configure Networking on 2 Machines to be used as Hypervisors so the servers could communicate normally to other Networks via some different intelligent switches that are connected to each of the interfaces of the server. The idea is the 2 redhat 8.3 machines to be used as  Hypervisor (HV) and each of the 2 HVs to each be hosting 2 Virtual guest Machines with preinstalled another set of Redhat 8.3 Ootpa. I've recently blogged on how to automate a bit installing the KVM Virtual machines with using predefined kickstart.cfg file.

The next step after install was setting up the network. Redhat has a very specific network configuration well known under /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eno*# or if you have configured the Redhats to fix the changing LAN card naming ens, eno, em1 to legacy eth0, eth1, eth2 on CentOS Linux – e.g. to be named as /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/{ifcfg-eth0,1,2,3}.

The first step to configure the network from that point is to come up with some network infrastrcture that will be ready on the HV nodes server-node1 server-node2 for the Virtual Machines to be used by server-vm1, server-vm2.

Thus for the sake of myself and some others I decide to give here the most important recognized variables that can be placed inside each of the ifcfg-eth0,ifcfg-eth1,ifcfg-eth2 …

A standard ifcfg-eth0 confing would look something this:
 

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
TYPE=Ethernet
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
NAME=eth0
UUID=…
ONBOOT=yes
HWADDR=0e:a4:1a:b6:fc:86
IPADDR0=10.31.24.10
PREFIX0=23
GATEWAY0=10.31.24.1
DNS1=192.168.50.3
DNS2=10.215.105.3
DOMAIN=example.com
IPV6_PEERDNS=yes
IPV6_PEERROUTES=yes


Lets say few words to each of the variables to make it more clear to people who never configured Newtork on redhat without the help of some of the console ncurses graphical like tools such as nmtui or want to completely stop the Network-Manager to manage the network and thus cannot take the advantage of using nmcli (a command-line tool for controlling NetworkManager).

Here is a short description of each of above configuration parameters:

TYPE=device_type: The type of network interface device
BOOTPROTO=protocol: Where protocol is one of the following:

  • none: No boot-time protocol is used.
  • bootp: Use BOOTP (bootstrap protocol).
  • dhcp: Use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).
  • static: if configuring static IP

EFROUTE|IPV6_DEFROUTE=answer

  • yes: This interface is set as the default route for IPv4|IPv6 traffic.
  • no: This interface is not set as the default route.

Usually most people still don't use IPV6 so better to disable that

IPV6INIT=answer: Where answer is one of the following:

  • yes: Enable IPv6 on this interface. If IPV6INIT=yes, the following parameters could also be set in this file:

IPV6ADDR=IPv6 address

IPV6_DEFAULTGW=The default route through the specified gateway

  • no: Disable IPv6 on this interface.

IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL|IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=answer: Where answer is one of the following:

  • yes: This interface is disabled if IPv4 or IPv6 configuration fails.
  • no: This interface is not disabled if configuration fails.

ONBOOT=answer: Where answer is one of the following:

  • yes: This interface is activated at boot time.
  • no: This interface is not activated at boot time.

HWADDR=MAC-address: The hardware address of the Ethernet device
IPADDRN=address: The IPv4 address assigned to the interface
PREFIXN=N: Length of the IPv4 netmask value
GATEWAYN=address: The IPv4 gateway address assigned to the interface. Because an interface can be associated with several combinations of IP address, network mask prefix length, and gateway address, these are numbered starting from 0.
DNSN=address: The address of the Domain Name Servers (DNS)
DOMAIN=DNS_search_domain: The DNS search domain (this is the search Domain-name.com you usually find in /etc/resolv.conf)

Other interesting file that affects how routing is handled on a Redhat Linux is

/etc/sysconfig/network

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network
# Created by anaconda
GATEWAY=10.215.105.

Having this gateway defined does add a default gateway

This file specifies global network settings. For example, you can specify the default gateway, if you want to apply some network settings such as routings, Alias IPs etc, that will be valid for all configured and active configuration red by systemctl start network scripts or the (the network-manager if such is used), just place it in that file.

Other files of intesresting to control how resolving is being handled on the server worthy to check are 

/etc/nsswitch.conf

and

/etc/hosts

If you want to set a preference of /etc/hosts being red before /etc/resolv.conf and DNS resolving for example you need to have inside it, below is default behavior of it.
 

root@redhat1 :~ ]#   grep -i hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
#     hosts: files dns
#     hosts: files dns  # from user file
# Valid databases are: aliases, ethers, group, gshadow, hosts,
hosts:      files dns myhostname

As you can see the default order is to read first files (meaning /etc/hosts) and then the dns (/etc/resolv.conf)
hosts: files dns

Now with this short intro description on basic values accepted by Redhat's /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg* prepared configurations.


I will give a practical example of configuring a bond0 interface with 2 members which were prepared based on Redhat's Official documentation found in above URLs:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/configuring_and_managing_networking/configuring-network-bonding_configuring-and-managing-networking
 

# Bonding on RHEL 7 documentation
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/networking_guide/sec-network_bonding_using_the_command_line_interface

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/networking_guide/sec-verifying_network_configuration_bonding_for_redundancy

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/deployment_guide/s2-networkscripts-interfaces_network-bridge

# Network Bridge with Bond documentation
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/deployment_guide/sec-Configuring_a_VLAN_over_a_Bond

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/24/html/Networking_Guide/sec-Network_Bridge_with_Bond.html


2. Configuring a single bond connection on eth0 / eth2 and setting 3 bridge interfaces bond -> br0, br1 -> eth1, br2 -> eth2

The task on my machines was to set up from 4 lan cards one bonded interface as active-backup type of bond with bonded lines on eth0, eth2 and 3 other 2 eth1, eth2 which will be used for private communication network that is connected via a special dedicated Switches and Separate VLAN 50, 51 over a tagged dedicated gigabit ports.

As said the 2 Servers had each 4 Broadcom Network CARD interfaces each 2 of which are paired (into a single card) and 2 of which are a solid Broadcom NetXtreme Dual Port 10GbE SFP+ and Dell Broadcom 5720 Dual Port 1Gigabit Network​.

2-ports-broadcom-netxtreme-dual-port-10GBe-spf-plus

On each of server-node1 and server-node2 we had 4 Ethernet Adapters properly detected on the Redhat

root@redhat1 :~ ]# lspci |grep -i net
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5720 2-port Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
01:00.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5720 2-port Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
19:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM57412 NetXtreme-E 10Gb RDMA Ethernet Controller (rev 01)
19:00.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM57412 NetXtreme-E 10Gb RDMA Ethernet Controller (rev 01)


I've already configured as prerogative net.ifnames=0 to /etc/grub2/boot.cfg and Network-Manager service disabled on the host (hence to not use Network Manager you'll see in below configuration NM_CONTROLLED="no" is telling the Redhat servers is not to be trying NetworkManager for more on that check my previous article Disable NetworkManager automatic Ethernet Interface Management on Redhat Linux , CentOS 6 / 7 / 8.

3. Types of Network Bonding

mode=0 (balance-rr)

This mode is based on Round-robin policy and it is the default mode. This mode offers fault tolerance and load balancing features. It transmits the packets in Round robin fashion that is from the first available slave through the last.

mode-1 (active-backup)

This mode is based on Active-backup policy. Only one slave is active in this band, and another one will act only when the other fails. The MAC address of this bond is available only on the network adapter part to avoid confusing the switch. This mode also provides fault tolerance.

mode=2 (balance-xor)

This mode sets an XOR (exclusive or) mode that is the source MAC address is XOR’d with destination MAC address for providing load balancing and fault tolerance. Each destination MAC address the same slave is selected.

mode=3 (broadcast)

This method is based on broadcast policy that is it transmitted everything on all slave interfaces. It provides fault tolerance. This can be used only for specific purposes.

mode=4 (802.3ad)

This mode is known as a Dynamic Link Aggregation mode that has it created aggregation groups having same speed. It requires a switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link. The slave selection for outgoing traffic is done based on a transmit hashing method. This may be changed from the XOR method via the xmit_hash_policy option.

mode=5 (balance-tlb)

This mode is called Adaptive transmit load balancing. The outgoing traffic is distributed based on the current load on each slave and the incoming traffic is received by the current slave. If the incoming traffic fails, the failed receiving slave is replaced by the MAC address of another slave. This mode does not require any special switch support.

mode=6 (balance-alb)

This mode is called adaptive load balancing. This mode does not require any special switch support.

Lets create the necessery configuration for the bond and bridges

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-bond0
DEVICE=bond0
NAME=bond0
TYPE=Bond
BONDING_MASTER=yes
#IPADDR=10.50.21.16
#PREFIX=26
#GATEWAY=10.50.0.1
#DNS1=172.20.88.2
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
BONDING_OPTS="mode=1 miimon=100 primary=eth0"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
BRIDGE=br0


[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-bond0.10
DEVICE=bond0.10
BOOTPROTO=none
ONPARENT=yes
#IPADDR=10.50.21.17
#NETMASK=255.255.255.0
VLAN=yes

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-br0
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=yes
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br0
UUID=4451286d-e40c-4d8c-915f-7fc12a16d595
DEVICE=br0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=10.50.50.16
PREFIX=26
GATEWAY=10.50.0.1
DNS1=172.20.0.2
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-br1
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=no
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=yes
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br1
UUID=40360c3c-47f5-44ac-bbeb-77f203390d29
DEVICE=br1
ONBOOT=yes
##IPADDR=10.50.51.241
PREFIX=28
##GATEWAY=10.50.0.1
##DNS1=172.20.0.2
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-br2
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=no
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=yes
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br2
UUID=fbd5c257-2f66-4f2b-9372-881b783276e0
DEVICE=br2
ONBOOT=yes
##IPADDR=10.50.51.243
PREFIX=28
##GATEWAY=10.50.0.1
##DNS1=172.20.10.1
NM_CONTROLLED=no
NM_CONTROLLED=no
BRIDGE=br0

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-eth0
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=bond0-slaveeth0
BOOTPROTO=none
#UUID=61065574-2a9d-4f16-b16e-00f495e2ee2b
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat1 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-eth1
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eth1
UUID=b4c359ae-7a13-436b-a904-beafb4edee94
DEVICE=eth1
ONBOOT=yes
BRIDGE=br1
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat1 :~ ]#  cat ifcfg-eth2
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=bond0-slaveeth2
BOOTPROTO=none
#UUID=821d711d-47b9-490a-afe7-190811578ef7
DEVICE=eth2
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat1 :~ ]#  cat ifcfg-eth3
TYPE=Ethernet
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
#BOOTPROTO=dhcp
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=no
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=yes
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
BRIDGE=br2
NAME=eth3
UUID=61065574-2a9d-4f16-b16e-00f495e2ee2b
DEVICE=eth3
ONBOOT=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-bond0
DEVICE=bond0
NAME=bond0
TYPE=Bond
BONDING_MASTER=yes
#IPADDR=10.50.21.16
#PREFIX=26
#GATEWAY=10.50.21.1
#DNS1=172.20.88.2
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
BONDING_OPTS="mode=1 miimon=100 primary=eth0"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
BRIDGE=br0

# cat ifcfg-bond0.10
DEVICE=bond0.10
BOOTPROTO=none
ONPARENT=yes
#IPADDR=10.50.21.17
#NETMASK=255.255.255.0
VLAN=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no
BRIDGE=br0

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-br0
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=yes
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br0
#UUID=f87e55a8-0fb4-4197-8ccc-0d8a671f30d0
UUID=4451286d-e40c-4d8c-915f-7fc12a16d595
DEVICE=br0
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=10.50.21.17
PREFIX=26
GATEWAY=10.50.21.1
DNS1=172.20.88.2
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]#  cat ifcfg-br1
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=no
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=no
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br1
UUID=40360c3c-47f5-44ac-bbeb-77f203390d29
DEVICE=br1
ONBOOT=yes
##IPADDR=10.50.21.242
PREFIX=28
##GATEWAY=10.50.21.1
##DNS1=172.20.88.2
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-br2
STP=yes
BRIDGING_OPTS=priority=32768
TYPE=Bridge
PROXY_METHOD=none
BROWSER_ONLY=no
BOOTPROTO=none
DEFROUTE=no
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6INIT=no
#IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
#IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
#IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
#IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6_AUTOCONF=no
IPV6_DEFROUTE=no
IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no
IPV6_ADDR_GEN_MODE=stable-privacy
NAME=br2
UUID=fbd5c257-2f66-4f2b-9372-881b783276e0
DEVICE=br2
ONBOOT=yes
##IPADDR=10.50.21.244
PREFIX=28
##GATEWAY=10.50.21.1
##DNS1=172.20.88.2
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-eth0
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=bond0-slaveeth0
BOOTPROTO=none
#UUID=ee950c07-7eb2-463b-be6e-f97e7ad9d476
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-eth1
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=eth1
UUID=ffec8039-58f0-494a-b335-7a423207c7e6
DEVICE=eth1
ONBOOT=yes
BRIDGE=br1
NM_CONTROLLED=no

[root@redhat2 :~ ]# cat ifcfg-eth2
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=bond0-slaveeth2
BOOTPROTO=none
#UUID=2c097475-4bef-47c3-b241-f5e7f02b3395
DEVICE=eth2
ONBOOT=yes
MASTER=bond0
SLAVE=yes
NM_CONTROLLED=no


Notice that the bond0 configuration does not have an IP assigned this is done on purpose as we're using the interface channel bonding together with attached bridge for the VM. Usual bonding on a normal physical hardware hosts where no virtualization use is planned is perhaps a better choice. If you however try to set up an IP address in that specific configuration shown here and you try to reboot the machine, you will end up with inacessible machine over the network like I did and you will need to resolve configuration via some kind of ILO / IDRAC interface.

4. Generating UUID for ethernet devices bridges and bonds

One thing to note is the command uuidgen you might need that to generate UID identificators to fit in the new network config files.

Example:
 

[root@redhat2 :~ ]#uuidgen br2
e7995e15-7f23-4ea2-80d6-411add78d703
[root@redhat2 :~ ]# uuidgen br1
05e0c339-5998-414b-b720-7adf91a90103
[root@redhat2 :~ ]# uuidgen br0
e6d7ff74-4c15-4d93-a150-ff01b7ced5fb


5. How to make KVM Virtual Machines see configured Network bridges (modify VM XML)

To make the Virtual machines installed see the bridges I had to

[root@redhat1 :~ ]#virsh edit VM_name1
[root@redhat1 :~ ]#virsh edit VM_name2

[root@redhat2 :~ ]#virsh edit VM_name1
[root@redhat2 :~ ]#virsh edit VM_name2

Find the interface network configuration and change it to something like:

    <interface type='bridge'>
      <mac address='22:53:00:56:5d:ac'/>
      <source bridge='br0'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>
    <interface type='bridge'>
      <mac address='22:53:00:2a:5f:01'/>
      <source bridge='br1'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x07' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>
    <interface type='bridge'>
      <mac address='22:34:00:4a:1b:6c'/>
      <source bridge='br2'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x08' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>


6. Testing the bond  is up and works fine

# ip addr show bond0
The result is the following:

 

4: bond0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,MASTER,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:cb:25:82 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff


The bond should be visible in the normal network interfaces with ip address show or /sbin/ifconfig

 

# cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.7.1 (April 27, 2011)

Bonding Mode: fault-tolerance (active-backup)
Primary Slave: None
Currently Active Slave: eth0
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0

Slave Interface: eth2
MII Status: up
Speed: 10000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 0
Permanent HW addr: 00:0c:29:ab:2a:fa
Slave queue ID: 0

 

According to the output eth0 is the active slave.

The active slaves device files (eth0 in this case) is found in virtual file system /sys/

# find /sys -name *eth0
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/net/eth0
/sys/devices/virtual/net/bond0/lower_eth0
/sys/class/net/eth0


You can remove a bond member say eth0 by 

 

 cd to the pci* directory
Example: /sys/devices/pci000:00/000:00:15.0

 

# echo 1 > remove


At this point the eth0 device directory structure that was previously located under /sys/devices/pci000:00/000:00:15.0 is no longer there.  It was removed and the device no longer exists as seen by the OS.

You can verify this is the case with a simple ifconfig which will no longer list the eth0 device.
You can also repeat the cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0 command from Step 1 to see that eth0 is no longer listed as active or available.
You can also see the change in the messages file.  It might look something like this:

2021-02-12T14:13:23.363414-06:00 redhat1  device eth0: device has been deleted
2021-02-12T14:13:23.368745-06:00 redhat1 kernel: [81594.846099] bonding: bond0: releasing active interface eth0
2021-02-12T14:13:23.368763-06:00 redhat1 kernel: [81594.846105] bonding: bond0: Warning: the permanent HWaddr of eth0 – 00:0c:29:ab:2a:f0 – is still in use by bond0. Set the HWaddr of eth0 to a different address to avoid conflicts.
2021-02-12T14:13:23.368765-06:00 redhat1 kernel: [81594.846132] bonding: bond0: making interface eth1 the new active one.

 

Another way to test the bonding is correctly switching between LAN cards on case of ethernet hardware failure is to bring down one of the 2 or more bonded interfaces, lets say you want to switch from active-backup from eth1 to eth2, do:
 

# ip link set dev eth0 down


That concludes the test for fail over on active slave failure.

7. Bringing bond updown (rescan) bond with no need for server reboot

You know bonding is a tedious stuff that sometimes breaks up badly so only way to fix the broken bond seems to be a init 6 (reboot) cmd but no actually that is not so.

You can also get the deleted device back with a simple pci rescan command:

# echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan


The eth0 interface should now be back
You can see that it is back with an ifconfig command, and you can verify that the bond sees it with this command:

# cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0


That concludes the test of the bond code seeing the device when it comes back again.

The same steps can be repeated only this time using the eth1 device and file structure to fail the active slave in the bond back over to eth0.

8. Testing the bond with ifenslave command (ifenslave command examples)

Below is a set of useful information to test the bonding works as expected with ifenslave command  comes from "iputils-20071127" package

– To show information of all the inerfaces

                  # ifenslave -a
                  # ifenslave –all-interfaces 

 

– To change the active slave

                  # ifenslave -c bond0 eth1
                  # ifenslave –change-active bond0 eth1 

 

– To remove the slave interface from the bonding device

                  # ifenslave -d eth1
                  # ifenslave –detach bond0 eth1 

 

– To show master interface info

                  # ifenslave bond0 

 

– To set the bond device down and automatically release all the slaves

                  # ifenslave bond1 down 

– To get the usage info

                  # ifenslave -u
                  # ifenslave –usage 

– To set to verbose mode

                  # ifenslave -v
                  # ifenslave –verbose 

9. Testing the bridge works fine

Historically over the years all kind of bridges are being handled with the brctl part of bridge-utils .deb / .rpm installable package.

The classical way to check a bridge is working is to do

# brctl show
# brctl show br0; brctl show br1; brctl show br2

# brctl showmacs br0
 

etc.

Unfortunately with redhat 8 this command is no longer available so to get information about configured bridges you need to use instead:

 

# bridge link show
3:eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 master bridge0 state forwarding priority 32 cost 100
4:eth2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 master bridge0 state listening priority 32 cost 100


10. Troubleshooting network connectivity issues on bond bridges and LAN cards

Testing the bond connection and bridges can route proper traffic sometimes is a real hassle so here comes at help the good old tcpdump

If you end up with issues with some of the ethernet interfaces between HV1 and HV2 to be unable to talk to each other and you have some suspiciousness that some colleague from the network team has messed up a copper (UTP) cable or there is a connectivity fiber optics issues. To check the VLAN tagged traffic headers on the switch you can listen to each and every bond0 and br0, br1, br2 eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3 configured on the server like so:

# tcpdump -i bond0 -nn -e vlan


Some further investigation on where does a normal ICMP traffic flows once everything is setup is a normal thing to do, hence just try to route a normal ping via the different server interfaces:

# ping -I bond0 DSTADDR

# ping -i eth0 DSTADDR

# ping -i eth1 DSTADDR

# ping -i eth2 DSTADDR


After conducting the ping do the normal for network testing big ICMP packages (64k) ping to make sure there are no packet losses etc., e.g:

# ping -I eth3 -s 64536  DSTADDR


If for 10 – 20 seconds the ping does not return package losses then you should be good.

ping “General Failure” no internet connection Windows 7 on HP work computer – Reasons for general failure and solution

Monday, May 26th, 2014

windows-7-general-failure-error-fix-on-hp-workbook
Out of a sudden today after running Malware Bytes – Free Anti-Malware & Internet Security Software, and after it found some Malware (Pup.Optional.Opencandy) and removed it it WI-FI internet on my work computer HP Elitebook 8470p mysteriously stopped working.

That's quite nasty because today I'm working from Home – well known among Hewlett Packard employees under WFH abbreviation. I couldn't connect normally to my home Access Point and tried pinging Google from command line just to get an error:
 

Transmit Failed: General Failure


and first I thought it is a wi-fi router related problem and restarted my WIFI RouterD-Link DI524. As I could normally connect to the WIFI and I see there is an internet IP assigned running:

ipconfig /all
...
Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 3C-A9-F4-4C-E7-98
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::5d2f:97b8:9e1a:2b13%63(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.159(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : May 23, 2014 14:19:01 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : May 30, 2014 14:32:49 PM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 1094494708
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-19-CB-1A-5D-A4-5D-36-5A-EB-84
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
192.168.2.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

As you see in above output I have notebook IP, default gateway and DNS IP assigned – i.e. all seems fine, so as I got General Failure from pinging the Internet in order to make sure my Linux router is not the bottleneck I tried pinging Default GW

C:UsersGeorgi> ping 192.168.2.1 Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
PING: transmit failed. General failure.
Ping statistics for 192.168.2.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

Just to realize I'm continually getting General Failure error

I tried trying to renew IPs, to make sure there is no some kind of IP assignment conflict with my other WIFI connected devices,reflushing DNS and resetting WinSock stack, hoping this could help:

> ipconfig /renew
> ipconfig /flushdns
> netsh winsock reset

Then I tried restarting the PC a couple of times, but unfortunately none of those helped the shitty error:
 

PING: Transmit failed. General Failure

continued …

I was totally out of idea .. and red some people managed to fix the issue after booting Windows into Safe mode with Networking. I tried booting in Safe mode, but as Hard Drive data is encrypted with Bitlocker encryption I was asked about some kinf of Serial Key – which I don't have at hand – hence I couldn't boot into Safe mode …

Here is moment to say even loopback device was returning "General Failure"!

I tried even connecting the laptop directly into my homelan with UTP cable, but though everything got connected, there was no local network and internet. I tried even connecting via Vivacom's mobile network 3G modem and even there I got the "General Failure" error …

Running out of options, I decided it might be that Malware Bytes broke something during Malware removal hence I put out back Quarantined Malware files – but this didn't solve it either.

solution-to-no-internet-general-failure-ping-error-firewall-off-screenshot.png

Finally I found this post and this thread talking that reason for "General Failure" might be firewall related. After checking my firewall settings in Windows Firewall and Advanced Security, surprisingly I realized everything related to firewall – e.g. Default Profile, Inbound, Outbound connections are Turned off!!!

windows-firewall-off-reason-for-general-failure-no-internet

I switched everything back and my Internet and local connection came back! THANKS GOD! Pfuu, now I can continue working. It seems HP work computers are patched with software / configured to not allow Internet connection in case if Firewall is Off. If you happen to be an HP Employee and you get the PING: Transmit failed. General Failure, be sure the first place to check is whether Windows Firewall is enabled? – if not enable it and this will solve your connectivity issues. Cheers ! 🙂

How to renew IP address, Add Routing and flush DNS cache on Windows XP / Vista / 7

Friday, November 25th, 2011

There are two handy Windows commands which can be used to renew IP address or flush prior cached DNS records which often create problems with resolving hosts.

1. To renew the IP address (fetch address from DHCP server) C:> ipconfig /release
C:> ipconfig /renew

In above cmd ipconfig /release will de-assign the IP address configured on all Windows LAN and Wireless interfaces, whether ipconfig /renew will send request for IP address to the DNS server.

To unassign and assign again IP address from DHCP server only for a particular LAN or WLAN card:

C:> ipconfig /release LAN
C:> ipconfig /renew LAN
C:> ipconfig /release WLAN
C:> ipconfig /renew WLAN

2. Adding specific routing to Windows

Windows has a Route command similar by syntax to Linux’s route command.
To add routing via a specific predefined IP addresses on Windows the commands should be something like:

C:> Route add 192.168.40.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.41.253
C:> Route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.41.254
The first command adds IP 192.168.40.0 in the network of 255 hosts to be routed via 192.168.41.253
The second one adds 192.168.41.254 as a default gateway for all outbound traffic from the Windows host.
To make permanent routing -p switch is used.
3. To clear Windows DNS cache (flush DNS cached records) C:> ipconfig /flushdns
This will clear all IP records corresponding to hostnames previously cached on the Windows host. Using ipconfig /flushdns is especially handy when IP address for a specific DNS host is changed. Flushing the Windows DNS cache can save us a lot of waiting before the domain example.com starts resolving to the new IP address let’s say 1.2.3.4 instead of the old one 2.2.2.2

How to delete entries from routing table on Linux

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Every now and then I had to tamper routing tables in Linux and every time I had to do it I forgot how I did it last time so finally I decided to put it on my blog and find how I can delete from Linux routing table easier

Deleting a record from a wrong routing table on Linux is a piece of cake basicly, here is an example:

linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

Let’s say this is the routing table and it’s incorrect as the routing through the node 169.254.0.0 should not be there.
Here is how the routing through 169.254.0.0 can be deleted:

linux:~# /sbin/route del -net 169.254.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0

Now here is the difference after deletion:

linux:~# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

If you want to delete the default gateway just use 0.0.0.0, e.g. -net 0.0.0.0 .. in above cmd example.
This would delete default gateway record from routing table which by the way in routing tables is marked with the UG flag.
Cheers 😉

How to make pptp VPN connection to use IPMI port (IPKVM / Web KVM) on Debian Linux

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

If you have used KVM, before you certainly have faced the requirement asked by many Dedicated Server Provider, for establishment of a PPTP (mppe / mppoe) or the so called Microsoft VPN tunnel to be able to later access via the tunnel through a Private IP address the web based Java Applet giving control to the Physical screen, monitor and mouse on the server.

This is pretty handy as sometimes the server is not booting and one needs a further direct access to the server physical Monitor.
Establishing the Microsoft VPN connection on Windows is a pretty trivial task and is easily achieved by navigating to:

Properties > Networking (tab) > Select IPv4 > Properties > Advanced > Uncheck "Use default gateway on remote network".

However achiving the same task on Linux seemed to be not such a trivial, task and it seems I cannot find anywhere information or precise procedure how to establish the necessery VPN (ptpt) ms encrypted tunnel.

Thanksfully I was able to find a way to do the same tunnel on my Debian Linux, after a bunch of experimentation with the ppp linux command.

To be able to establish the IPMI VPN tunnel, first I had to install a couple of software packages, e.g.:

root@linux:~# apt-get install ppp pppconfig pppoeconf pptp-linux

Further on it was necessery to load up two kernel modules to enable the pptp mppe support:

root@linux:~# modprobe ppp_mppe
root@linux:~# modprobe ppp-deflate

I’ve also enabled the modules to be loading up during my next Linux boot with /etc/modules to not be bother to load up the same modules after reboot manually:

root@linux:~# echo ppp_mppe >> /etc/modules
root@linux:~# echo ppp-deflate >> /etc/modules

Another thing I had to do is to enable the require-mppe-128 option in /etc/ppp/options.pptp.
Here is how:

root@linux:~# sed -e 's$#require-mppe-128$require-mppe-128$g' /etc/ppp/options.pptp >> /tmp/options.pptp
root@linux:~# mv /tmp/options.pptp /etc/ppp/options.pptp
root@linux:~# echo 'nodefaultroute' >> /etc/ppp/options.pptp

In order to enable debug log for the ppp tunnel I also edited /etc/syslog.conf and included the following configuration inside:

root@linux:~# vim /etc/syslog.conf
*.=debug;
news.none;mail.none -/var/log/debug
*.=debug;*.=info;
*.=debug;*.=info;
root@linux:~# killall -HUP rsyslogd

The most important part of course is the command line with ppp command to connect to the remote IP via the VPN tunnel ;), here is how I achieved that:

root@linux:~# pppd debug require-mppe pty "pptp ipmiuk2.net --nolaunchpppd" file /etc/ppp/options.pptp user My_Dedi_Isp_Given_Username password The_Isp_Given_Password

This command, brings up the ppp interface and makes the tunnel between my IP and the remote VPN target host.

Info about the tunnel could be observed with command:

ifconfig -a ppp
ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.20.254.32 P-t-P:10.20.0.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1496 Metric:1
RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:70 (70.0 B) TX bytes:672 (672.0 B)

One more thing before I could finally access the IPMI’s web interface via the private IP was to add routing to the private IP address via the tunnel other side IP address:

# 10.20.0.1 P-t-P IP address
ip route add 10.20.1.124/32 dev ppp0

Now logically one would thing the Web interface to login and use the Java Applet to connect to the server would be accessible but no IT wasn’t !

It took me a while to figure out what is the problem and if not the guys in irc.freenode.net ##networking helped me I would never really find out why http://10.20.1.124/ and https://10.20.1.124/ were inaccessible.

Strangely enough both ports 80 and 443 were opened on 10.20.1.124 and it seems like working, however though I can ping both 10.20.1.124 and 10.20.0.1 there was no possible way to access 10.20.1.124 with TCP traffic.

Routing to the Microsoft Tunnel was fine as I’ve double checked all was fine except whether I tried accessing the IPMI web interface the browser was trying to open the URL and keeps opening like forever.

Thanksfully after a long time of futile try outs, a tip was suggested by a good guy in freenode nick named ne2k

To make the TCP connection in the Microsoft Tunnel work and consequently be able to access the webserver on the remote IPMI host, one needs to change the default MTU set for the ppp0 tunnel interface.
Here is how:


ip link set ppp0 mtu 1438

And tadam! It’s done now IPKVM is accessible via http://10.20.1.124 or https://10.20.1.124 web interface. Horay ! 🙂

Universal way to configure a static IP address on ethernet lan (eth0) interface in Linux

Friday, April 29th, 2011

One of the most precious commands I ever learned to use in Linux is ifconfig and route .

They have saved my life in configuring the static IP based internet of numerous Desktop Linux computers & notebooks.

Though the usage is very much known by most of the people who are into Linux, I believe it’s likely that the newer people who entered the world of Linux or some Unix system administrators are still lacking the knowledge on how to manually configure their eth0 lan card, thus I thought it might be handy for someone to share it, I know that for most unix users & admins especially the advanced ones this post might be funny, so if you’re an advanced administrator just skip the post and don’t laught at it 😉

Now the universal commands (works on each and every Linux host) to configure manually static IP internet connection on Linux are:

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0
linux:~# /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1
linux:~# echo 'nameserver 192.168.0.1' >> /etc/resolv.conf

I’ve used this simple commands on thousands ot Linux hosts and it’s still handy 🙂

In above example 192.168.0.3 is the static IP address provided by the ISP, netmask is the netmask and the second /sbin/route add default gw would set the default gateway to the example ip 192.168.0.1

The third final line would add up a resolver nameserver the Linux host would use.

Cheers 😉