Bonding does not switch to slave

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4.8
  • 32-bit x86 systems

Issue

  • Bonding with mii_monitor does not switch to slave interfaces when the primary NIC goes down
  • Bonding with arp_monitor does not switch to slave interfaces when the primary NIC goes down

Resolution

Root Cause

  • Bonding code uses jiffies to compute timeouts, but there is an error in computation when jiffies wraps.

Diagnostic Steps

  • When this symptom happens, the message of link down of bonding device is not logged
Jul 12 16:21:10 xxxxxx kernel: bnx2: eth0 NIC Copper Link is Down
  • On normal case, the below bonding messages are logged
Aug 10 15:23:14 xxxxxx kernel: bnx2: eth0 NIC Copper Link is Down
Aug 10 15:23:16 xxxxxx kernel: bonding: bond0: link status down for active interface eth0, disabling it
Aug 10 15:23:16 xxxxxx kernel: bonding: bond0: making interface eth2 the new active one
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