Posts Tagged ‘sysconfig’

Generate and Add UUID for every existing Redhat / CentOS / RHEL network interface to configuration if missing howto

Saturday, August 5th, 2023

linux-fix-missing-uid-on-redhat-centos-fedora-networking-logo

If you manage old Linux machines it might be after the update either due to update mess or because of old system administrators which manually included the UUID to the config forgot to include it in the present network configuration in /etc/sysconfig/networking-scripts/ifcfg-* Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID)128-bit label I used a small one liner after listing all the existing configured LAN interfaces reported from iproute2 network stack with ip command. As this might be useful to someone out there here is the simple command that returns a number of commands to later just copy paste to console once verified there are no duplicates of the UUID already in the present server configuration with grep.

In overall to correct the configs and reload the network with the proper UUIDs here is what I had to do:


# grep -rli UUID /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*

No output from the recursive grep means UUIDs are not present on any existing interface, so we can step further check all the existing machines network ifaces and generate the missing UUIDs with uuidgen command

# ip a s |grep -Ei ': <'|sed -e 's#:##g' |grep -v '\.' |awk '{ print $2 }'
ifcfg-venet0
ifcfg-eth0
ifcfg-eth1

ifcfg-eth2
ifcfg-eth3

I've stumbled on that case on some legacy Linux inherited from other people sysadmins and in order to place the correct 

# for i in $(ip a s |grep -Ei ': <'|sed -e 's#:##g' |grep -v '\.' |awk '{ print $2 }'); do echo "echo UUID=$(uuidgen $i)"" >> ifcfg-$i"; done|grep -v '\-lo' 
echo UUID=26819d24-9452-4431-a9ca-176d87492b75 >> ifcfg-venet0
echo UUID=3c7e8848-0232-436f-a52a-46db9a03eb33 >> ifcfg-eth0
echo UUID=1fc0454d-bf23-417d-b960-571fc04754d2 >> ifcfg-eth1
echo UUID=5793c1e5-4481-4f09-967e-2cceda85c35f >> ifcfg-eth2
echo UUID=65fdcaf6-d271-4845-a8f1-0ec478c375d1 >> ifcfg-eth3


As you can see I exclude the loopback interface -lo from the ouput as it is not necessery to have UUID for it.
That's all folks problem solved. Enjoy

OpenVZ enable or disable auto start on Linux Hypervisor host boot for Virtual Machine containers

Wednesday, July 7th, 2021

howto-add-virtual-machine-to-auto-start-with-vz-openvz-linux-containers-4-logo-slogan-vertical-big

To make OpenVZ / Virtuozzo Hypervisor servers and you are not sure whether your configured container virtual machines are configured to automatically boot on Linux Physical OS host boot in case of restart after patch update set or after unexpected shutdown due to Kernel / OS bug a hang or due to some electricity Power outage.

To check what is your current configuration for Virtual Environment on CentOS Linux you need to check inside /etc/sysconfig/vz-scripts/VEID.conf
You need to check the value for inside the file

ONBOOT="" 

To get the exact ID of "VEID.conf of the current openvz guest VM containers exec:

[root@openvz vz-scripts]# vzlist -a
      CTID      NPROC STATUS    IP_ADDR         HOSTNAME
       300         23 running   10.10.10.1     VirtualMachine1
       301         25 running   10.10.10.2     VirtualMachine2

[root@openvz ~]# cd /etc/sysconfig/vz-scripts
[root@gbapp2 vz-scripts]# pwd
/etc/sysconfig/vz-scripts

[root@openvz vz-scripts]# grep -i ONBOOT 300.conf 301.conf
300.conf:ONBOOT="yes"
301.conf:ONBOOT="yes"

If you happen to have configured ONBOOT="no" you will need to the change to respective VEID.conf:

vi /etc/sysconfig/vz-scripts/VEID.conf

search for

ONBOOT=”no”

and change to

ONBOOT=”yes”

OpenVZ_virtuozzo-standard-process-tree-landscape

OpenVZ server process tree. The colors of the virtual severs are indicated by colors.

OpenVZ Quick cheat sheet commands

This change will auto-start the VPS container next time the host Hypervisor node is rebooted.
If you happen to have daily work with OpenVZ legacy systems like I do you might find also useful the following OpenVZ Cheatsheet pdf document.

A miniature quick cheatsheet for OpenVZ Virtualion, in case if you are like me and you have to use various virtualization technologies and tend to forget is as below:

vzlist                               # List running instances
vzlist -a                            # List all instances

 

vzctl stop <instance>
vzctl start <instance>
vzctl status <instance>

vzctl exec <instance> <command>      # Run a command

vzctl enter <instance>               # Get console

vzyum <instance> install <package>   # Install a package


# Change properties
vzctl set <instance> –hostname <hostname> –save
vzctl set <instance> –ipadd <IP> –save
vzctl set <instance> –userpasswd root:<password> –save

If need to get more insight on how OpenVZ Virtualization does work on a low level and stretch out its possibilities, an old but useful document you might want to check is OpenVZ-Users-Guide PDF.


If you need it to hava e copy of it openvz_cheat_sheet.txt.

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.

How to debug failing service in systemctl and add a new IP network alias in CentOS Linux

Wednesday, January 15th, 2020

linux-debug-failing-systemctl-systemd-service--add-new-IP-alias-network-cable

If you get some error with some service that is start / stopped via systemctl you might be pondering how to debug further why the service is not up then then you'll be in the situation I was today.
While on one configured server with 8 eth0 configured ethernet network interfaces the network service was reporting errors, when atempted to restart the RedHat way via:
 

service network restart


to further debug what the issue was as it was necessery I had to find a way how to debug systemctl so here is how:

 

How to do a verbose messages status for sysctlct?

 

linux:~# systemctl status network

linux:~# systemctl status network

 

Another useful hint is to print out only log messages for the current boot, you can that with:

# journalctl -u service-name.service -b

 

if you don't want to have the less command like page separation ( paging ) use the –no-pager argument.

 

# journalctl -u network –no-pager

Jan 08 17:09:14 lppsq002a network[8515]: Bringing up interface eth5:  [  OK  ]

    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a network[8515]: Bringing up interface eth6:  [  OK  ]
    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a network[8515]: Bringing up interface eth7:  [  OK  ]
    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a systemd[1]: network.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking.
    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Unit network.service entered failed state.
    Jan 08 17:09:15 lppsq002a systemd[1]: network.service failed.
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Bring up/down networking…
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth0:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth1:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:45 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth2:  ERROR     : [/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth] Device eth2 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: [FAILED]
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth3:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth4:  ERROR     : [/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth] Device eth4 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: [FAILED]
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth5:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:46 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth6:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: Bringing up interface eth7:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a network[55905]: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a systemd[1]: network.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking.
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Unit network.service entered failed state.
    Jan 15 11:04:47 lppsq002a systemd[1]: network.service failed.
    Jan 15 11:08:22 lppsq002a systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Bring up/down networking…
    Jan 15 11:08:22 lppsq002a network[56841]: Bringing up loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:08:22 lppsq002a network[56841]: Bringing up interface eth0:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:08:22 lppsq002a network[56841]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:08:26 lppsq002a network[56841]: Bringing up interface eth1:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:08:26 lppsq002a network[56841]: [  OK  ]
    Jan 15 11:08:26 lppsq002a network[56841]: Bringing up interface eth2:  ERROR     : [/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-eth] Device eth2 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.
    Jan 15 11:08:26 lppsq002a network[56841]: [FAILED]
    Jan 15 11:08:26 lppsq002a network[56841]: Bringing up interface eth3:  RTNETLINK answers: File exists
    Jan 15 11:08:27 lppsq002a network[56841]: [  OK  ]


2020-01-15-15_42_11-root-server

 

Another useful thing debug arguments is the -xe to do:

# journalctl -xe –no-pager

 

  • -x (– catalog)
    Augment log lines with explanation texts from the message catalog.
    This will add explanatory help texts to log messages in the output
    where this is available.
  •  -e ( –pager-end )  Immediately jump to the end of the journal inside the implied pager
      tool.

2020-01-15-15_42_32-root-server

Finally after fixing the /etc/sysconfig/networking-scripts/* IP configuration issues I had all the 8 Ethernet interfaces to work as expected
 

# systemctl status network


2020-01-15-16_15_38-root-server

 

 

2. Adding a new IP alias to eth0 interface


Further on I had  to add an IP Alias on the CenOS via its networking configuration, this is done by editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg* files.
To create an IP alias for first lan interface eth0, I've had to created a new file named ifcfg-eth0:0
 

linux:~# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
linux:~# vim ifcfg-eth0:0


with below content

NAME="eth0:0"
ONBOOT="yes"
BOOTPROTO="none"
IPADDR="10.50.10.5"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"


Adding this IP address network alias works across all RPM based distributions and should work also on Fedora and Open SuSE as well as Suse Enterprise Linux.
If you however prefer to use a text GUI and do it the CentOS server administration way you can use nmtui (Text User Interface for controlling NetworkManager). tool.
 

linux:~# nmtui

 

centos7_nmtui-ncurses-network-configuration-sysadmin-tool

nmtui_add_alias_interface-screenshot

How to disable IPv6 on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS and RHEL Linux

Friday, December 9th, 2011

I have few servers, which have automatically enabled IPv6 protocols (IPv6 gets automatically enabled on Debian), as well as on most latest Linux distribituions nowdays.

Disabling IPv6 network protocol on Linux if not used has 2 reasons:

1. Security (It’s well known security practice to disable anything not used on a server)
Besides that IPv6 has been known for few criticil security vulnerabilities, which has historically affected the Linux kernel.
2. Performance (Sometimes disabling IPv6 could have positive impact on IPv4 especially on heavy traffic network servers).
I’ve red people claiming disabling IPv6 improves the DNS performance, however since this is not rumors and did not check it personally I cannot positively confirm this.

Disabling IPv6 on all GNU / Linuces can be achieved by changing the kernel sysctl settings net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 by default net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 equals 1 which means IPv6 is enabled, hence to disable IPv6 I issued:

server:~# sysctl net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=0

To set it permanently on system boot I put the setting also in /etc/sysctl.conf :

server:~# echo 'net.ipv6.conf.all.disable = 1 >> /etc/sysctl.conf

The aforedescribed methods should be working on most Linux kernels version > 2.6.27 in that number it should work 100% on recent versions of Fedora, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu.

To disable IPv6 protocol on Debian Lenny its necessery to blackist the ipv6 module in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist by issuing:

echo 'blacklist ipv6' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

On Fedora / CentOS there is a another universal “Redhat” way disable IPv6.

On them disabling IPv6 is done by editting /etc/sysconfig/network and adding:

NETWORKING_IPV6=no
IPV6INIT=no

I would be happy to hear how people achieved disabling the IPv6, since on earlier and (various by distro) Linuxes the way to disable the IPv6 is probably different.
 

Alto to stop Iptables IPV6 on CentOS / Fedora and RHEL issue:

# service ip6tables stop

# service ip6tables off

Boost local network performance (Increase network thoroughput) by enabling Jumbo Frames on GNU / Linux

Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Jumbo Frames boost local network performance in GNU / Linux

So what is Jumbo Frames? and why, when and how it can increase the network thoroughput on Linux?

Jumbo Frames are Ethernet frames with more than 1500 bytes of payload. They can carry up to 9000 bytes of payload. Many Gigabit switches and network cards supports them.
Jumbo frames is a networking standard for many educational networks like AARNET. Unfortunately most commercial ISPs doesn't support them and therefore enabling Jumbo frames will rarely increase bandwidth thoroughput for information transfers over the internet.
Hopefully in the years to come with the constant increase of bandwidths and betterment of connectivity, jumbo frames package transfers will be supported by most ISPs as well.
Jumbo frames network support is just great for is small local – home networks and company / corporation office intranets.

Thus enabling Jumbo Frame is absolutely essential for "local" ethernet networks, where large file transfers occur frequently. Such networks are networks where, there is often a Video or Audio streaming with high quality like HD quality on servers running File Sharing services like Samba, local FTP sites,Webservers etc.

One other advantage of enabling jumbo frames is reduce of general server overhead and decrease in CPU load / (CPU usage), when transferring large or enormous sized files.Therefore having jumbo frames enabled on office network routers with GNU / Linux or any other *nix OS is vital.

Jumbo Frames traffic is supported in GNU / Linux kernel since version 2.6.17+ in earlier 2.4.x it was possible through external third party kernel patches.

1. Manually increase MTU to 9000 with ifconfig to enable Jumbo frames

debian:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000

The default MTU on most GNU / Linux (if not all) is 1500, to check the default set MTU with ifconfig:

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0|grep -i mtu
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

To take advantage of Jumbo Frames, all that has to be done is increase the default Maximum Transmission Unit from 1500 to 9000

For those who don't know MTU is the largest physical packet size that can be transferred over the network. MTU is measured by default in bytes. If a information has to be transferred over the network which exceeds the lets say 1500 MTU (bytes), it will be chopped and transferred in few packs each of 1500 size.

MTUs differ on different netework topologies. Just for info here are the few main MTUs for main network types existing today:
 

  • 16 MBit/Sec Token Ring – default MTU (17914)
  • 4 Mbits/Sec Token Ring – default MTU (4464)
  • FDDI – default MTU (4352)
  • Ethernet – def MTU (1500)
  • IEEE 802.3/802.2 standard – def MTU (1492)
  • X.25 (dial up etc.) – def MTU (576)
  • Jumbo Frames – def max MTU (9000)

Setting the MTU packet frames to 9000 to enable Jumbo Frames is done with:

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000

If the command returns nothing, this most likely means now the server can communicate on eth0 with MTUs of each 9000 and therefore the network thoroughput will be better. In other case, if the network card driver or card is not a gigabit one the cmd will return error:

SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument

2. Enabling Jumbo Frames on Debian / Ubuntu etc. "the Debian way"

a.) Jumbo Frames on ethernet interfaces with static IP address assigned Edit /etc/network/interfaces and you should have for each of the interfaces you would like to set the Jumbo Frames, records similar to:

Raising the MTU to 9000 if for one time can be done again manually with ifconfig

debian:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.5
network 192.168.0.0
gateway 192.168.0.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
mtu 9000

For each of the interfaces (eth1, eth2 etc.), add a chunk similar to one above changing the changing the IPs, Gateway and Netmask.

If the server is with two gigabit cards (eth0, eth1) supporting Jumbo frames add to /etc/network/interfaces :

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.5
network 192.168.0.0
gateway 192.168.0.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
mtu 9000

iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.0.6
network 192.168.0.0
gateway 192.168.0.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
mtu 9000

b.) Jumbo Frames on ethernet interfaces with dynamic IP obtained via DHCP

Again in /etc/network/interfaces put:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
post-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000

3. Setting Jumbo Frames on Fedora / CentOS / RHEL "the Redhat way"

Enabling jumbo frames on all Gigabit lan interfaces (eth0, eth1, eth2 …) in Fedora / CentOS / RHEL is done through files:
 

  • /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-eth0
  • /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-eth1

etc. …
append in each one at the end of the respective config:

MTU=9000

[root@fedora ~]# echo 'MTU=9000' >> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth


a quick way to set Maximum Transmission Unit to 9000 for all network interfaces on on Redhat based distros is by executing the following loop:

[root@centos ~]# for i in $(echo /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth*); do \echo 'MTU=9000' >> $i
done

P.S.: Be sure that all your interfaces are supporting MTU=9000, otherwise increase while the MTU setting is set will return SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument err.
The above loop is to be used only, in case you have a group of identical machines with Lan Cards supporting Gigabit networks and loaded kernel drivers supporting MTU up to 9000.

Some Intel and Realtek Gigabit cards supports only a maximum MTU of 7000, 7500 etc., so if you own a card like this check what is the max MTU the card supports and set it in the lan device configuration.
If increasing the MTU is done on remote server through SSH connection, be extremely cautious as restarting the network might leave your server inaccessible.

To check if each of the server interfaces are "Gigabit ready":

[root@centos ~]# /sbin/ethtool eth0|grep -i 1000BaseT
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full

If you're 100% sure there will be no troubles with enabling MTU > 1500, initiate a network reload:

[root@centos ~]# /etc/init.d/network restart
...

4. Enable Jumbo Frames on Slackware Linux

To list the ethernet devices and check they are Gigabit ones issue:

bash-4.1# lspci | grep [Ee]ther
0c:00.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev 11)
0c:01.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev 11)

Setting up jumbo frames on Slackware Linux has two ways; the slackware way and the "universal" Linux way:

a.) the Slackware way

On Slackware Linux, all kind of network configurations are done in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

Usual config for eth0 and eth1 interfaces looks like so:

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]="10.10.0.1"
NETMASK[0]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[0]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]="10.1.1.1"
NETMASK[1]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""

To raise the MTU to 9000, the variables MTU[0]="9000" and MTU[1]="9000" has to be included after each interface config block, e.g.:

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]="172.16.1.1"
NETMASK[0]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[0]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
MTU[0]="9000"
# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]="10.1.1.1"
NETMASK[1]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
MTU[1]="9000"

bash-4.1# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart
...

b.) The "Universal" Linux way

This way is working on most if not all Linux distributions.
Insert in /etc/rc.local:

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000 up
/sbin/ifconfig eth1 mtu 9000 up

5. Check if Jumbo Frames are properly enabled

There are at least two ways to display the MTU settings for eths.

a.) Using grepping the MTU from ifconfig

linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth0|grep -i mtu
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:9000 Metric:1
linux:~# /sbin/ifconfig eth1|grep -i mtu
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:9000 Metric:1

b.) Using ip command from iproute2 package to get MTU

linux:~# ip route get 192.168.2.134
local 192.168.2.134 dev lo src 192.168.2.134
cache mtu 9000 advmss 1460 hoplimit 64

linux:~# ip route show dev wlan0
192.168.2.0/24 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.2.134
default via 192.168.2.1

You see MTU is now set to 9000, so the two server lans, are now able to communicate with increased network thoroughput.
Enjoy the accelerated network transfers 😉

 

How to add a range of virtual IPs to a CentOS and Fedora Linux server

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Recently I had the task to add a range of few IP addresses to as a virtual interface IPs.

The normal way to do that is of course using the all well known ifconfig eth0:0, ifconfig eth0:1 or using a tiny shell script which does it and set it up to run through /etc/rc.local .

However the Redhat guys could omit all this mambo jambo and do it The Redhat way TM 😉 by using a standard method documented in CentOS and RHEL documentation.
Here is how:

# go to network-script directory[root@centos ~]# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
# create ifcfg-eth0-range (if virtual ips are to be assigned on eth0 lan interface[root@centos network-scripts]# touch ifcfg-eth0-range

Now inside ifcfg-eth0-range, open up with a text editor or use the echo command to put inside:

IPADDR_START=192.168.1.120
IPADDR_END=192.168.1.250
NETMASK=255.255.255.25
CLONENUM_START=0

Now save the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0-range file and finally restart centos networking via the network script:

[root@centos network-scripts]# service network restart

That’s all now after the network gets reinitialized all the IPs starting with 192.168.1.120 and ending in 192.168.1.250< will get assigned as virtual IPs for eth0 interface
Cheers 😉

How to configure networking in CentOS, Fedora and other Redhat based distros

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

On Debian Linux I’m used to configure the networking via /etc/network/interfaces , however on Redhat based distributions to do a manual configuration of network interfaces is a bit different.

In order to configure networking in CentOS there is a special file for each interface and some values one needs to fill in to enable networking.

These network adapters configuration files for Redhat based distributions are located in the files:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*

Just to give you and idea on the content of this network configuration file, here is how it looks like:

[root@centos:~ ]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
DHCPCLASS=
HWADDR=00:19:99:9C:08:3A
IPADDR=192.168.0.1
NETMASK=255.255.252.0
ONBOOT=yes

This configuration is of course just for eth0 for other network card names and devices, one needs to look up for the proper file name which corresponds to the network interface visible with the ifconfig command.
For instance to list all network interfaces via ifconfig use:

[root@centos:~ ]# /sbin/ifconfig |grep -i 'Link encap'|awk '{ print $1 }'
eth0
eth1
lo

In this case there are only two network cards on my host.
The configuration files for the ethernet network devices eth0 and eth1 from below example are located in files /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth{1,2}

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory contains plenty of shell scripts related to Fedora networking.
This directory contains actually the networking boot time load up rules for fedora and CentOS hosts.

The complete list of options available which can be used in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx is located in:
/usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt

, to quickly observe the documentation:

[root@centos:~ ]# less /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt

One typical example of configuring a CentOS based host to possess a static IP address (192.168.1.5) and a gateway (192.168.1.1), which will be assigned in boot time during the /etc/init.d/network is loaded is:

[root@centos:~ ]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
IPV6INIT=no
BOOTPROTO=static
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
DEVICE=eth0
IPADDR=192.168.1.5
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
NETMASK=255.255.255.0

After some changes to the network configuration files are made, to load up the new rules a /etc/init.d/network script restart is necessery with the command:

[root@centos:~ ]# /etc/init.d/network restart

Of course one can always use /etc/rc.local script as universal way to configure network rules on a Redhat based host, however using methods like rc.local to load up, ifconfig or route rules in a Fedora would break the distribution logic and therefore is not recommended.

There is also a serious additional reason against using /etc/rc.local post init commands load up script.
If one uses rc.local to load up and configure the networing, the network will get initialized only after all the other scripts in /etc/init.d/ gets started.

Therefore using /etc/rc.local might also be DANGEROUS!, if used remotely via (ssh), supposedly it might completely fail to load the networking, if all bringing the server interfaces relies on it.

Here is an example, imagine that some of the script set in to load up during a CentOS boot up hangs and does continue to load forever (for example after some crucial software upate), as a consequence the /etc/rc.local script will never get executed as it only starts up after all the rest init scripts had succesfully completed execution.

A network eth1 interface configuration for a Fedora host which has to fetch it’s network settings automatically via DHCP is as follows:

[root@fedora:/etc/network:]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
# Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100]DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=00:0A:E4:C9:7B:51
ONBOOT=yes

To sum it up I think Fedora’s /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts methodology to configure ethernet devices is a way inferior if compared to Debian.

In GNU/Debian Linux configuration of all networking is (simpler)!, everything related to networking is in one single file ( /etc/network/interfaces ), moreover getting all the thorough documentation for the network configurations options for the interfaces is available as a system wide manual (e.g. man interfaces).

Partially Debian interfaces configuration is a bit more complicated in terms of syntax if matched against Redhat’s network-scripts/ifcfg-*, lest that generally I still find Debian’s manual network configuration interface to be easier to configure networking manually vicommand line.