Bonding does not work after updating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

Issue

When a bonding module is loaded, you may see the following message and bonding is down.

      # modprobe bonding 
      FATAL: Error inserting bonding (/lib/modules/2.6.18-164.6.1.el5/kernel/drivers/net/bonding/bonding.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg) 
       
      # dmesg | grep bond 
      bonding: Unknown symbol ndisc_build_skb 
      bonding: Unknown symbol in6_dev_finish_destroy 
      bonding: Unknown symbol ndisc_send_skb 
      bonding: Unknown symbol unregister_inet6addr_notifier 
      bonding: Unknown symbol register_inet6addr_notifier

Resolution

The bonding driver has been updated to the latest upstream version. This update, however has introduced symbol/ipv6 module dependency capabilities. Therefore, if IPv6 has been previously disabled (by inserting the "install ipv6 /bin/false" line in the /etc/modprobe.conf file) an upgrade to the bonding driver in 5.4 will result in the bonding kernel module failing to load.

The "install ipv6 /bin/false" line needs to be replaced with "options ipv6 disable=1" for the module to load properly, as follows:

     # install ipv6 /bin/false
     options ipv6 disable=1 

This has been documented in the 5.4 release notes:

• This content is not included.This content is not included.http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Release_Notes/sect-Release_Notes-Kernel_Related_Updates.html
• This content is not included.This content is not included.https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=531873

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