The eternal fight between admins and computers


Ethernet bonding in Debian Etch

Posted in Debian, Networking, Tips by Vide on October 2, 2007
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UPDATE: This works only with Debian Etch, cause in Lenny update-modules is deprecated!

If you want to enable bonding in Debian, for example to have high-availability of your network interfaces, these are the quick steps you have to do:

# apt-get install ifenslave-2.6

edit /etc/network/interfaces to look like this:

auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
# dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed
dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1
up /sbin/ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1

then, add this line to /etc/modprobe.d/aliases:

alias bond0 bonding

and issue
# update-modules

Stop the old eth0 interface with

# ifconfig eth0 down

(do not use ifdown cause it reads /etc/network/interfaces that no long knows anything about eth0)

and finally start the new bonded interface with

# ifup bond0
OR
# /etc/init.d/networking restart

3 Responses to 'Ethernet bonding in Debian Etch'

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  1. EdLesMann said,

    Thanks! This was very useful!
    I found a couple of other tutorials but I couldn’t get any of them to work properly. I then found this and it worked on the first try!

    Thanks!

  2. Dennis said,

    very nice dude !

    small, simple and usefull..

    have a nice day !

    greetings from germany


  3. [...] by Vide on November 6, 2009 In an older post I explained how to create a bond interface in Debian Etch… now, this doesn’t work anymore due to some changes in [...]


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