Trunk failover issue

[toxictrash]

Hi All

I'm having problems configuring a trunk port in failover mode for openBSD 4.9.
The situation is this, I have one bsd with two interfaces(vic0 and vic1) that are directly connected to a simple switch on the third port of the switch I have a windows machine.

The idea is that I want the BSD to have redundant interfaces and I want to do it by uniting the two vic cards in to one failover trunk interface.
It looks simple but no matter what I try it is not working:

This is my configuration:
# ifconfig

vic0: flags=8b43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,ALLMULTI,S IMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:0c:29:87:da:42
priority: 0
trunk: trunkdev trunk10
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: active
inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe87:da4c%vic0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1

vic1: flags=8b43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,ALLMULTI,S IMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:0c:29:87:da:42
priority: 0
trunk: trunkdev trunk10
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: active
inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe87:da56%vic1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2

trunk10: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr 00:0c:29:87:da:42
priority: 0
trunk: trunkproto failover
trunkport vic1
trunkport vic0 master,active
groups: trunk
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: active
inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe87:da42%trunk10 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x9
inet 10.30.0.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.30.0.255
#

The windows machine has IP: 10.30.0.100/24 and at the moment the ping is going fine but if I put vic0 down the ping stops ;(
Please advice on how can this be fixed or if Im missconfiguring something!
Thanks in advance!

Best Regards

[s0xxx]

Originally Posted by toxictrash

Hi All

I'm having problems configuring a trunk port in failover mode for openBSD 4.9.
The situation is this, I have one bsd with two interfaces(vic0 and vic1) that are directly connected to a simple switch on the third port of the switch I have a windows machine.

I think this might be the source of the problem, as you do need a smart switch, not just a simple one. You need switch that has support for 802.3ad (Link Aggregation). See the end of trunk(4) man page:

CAVEATS

     The trunk protocols loadbalance and roundrobin require a switch which
     supports IEEE 802.3ad static link aggregation; otherwise protocols such
     as inet6(4) duplicate address detection (DAD) cannot properly deal with
     duplicate packets.

[jggimi]

Hello and welcome.

First, I don't think an 802.3ad switch is needed for trunkproto failover, since only one link should normally ever be used at a time.

Second, there is a history of problems with trunk failover with specific NIC drivers due to recognizing states appropriately. From memory, ath(4) comes to mind, but I seem to recall additional drivers having similar problems, including one I was using at one time, perhaps vr(4) or dc(4). If you scan through the misc@ archives, you will see a history of informal problem reports with little discussion and the occasional driver patch, or a pointer to a driver patch on the tech@ archives.

Third, you seem to be using a VMWare NIC driver, vic(4). This may have a similar state recognition issue to some of the other "real" drivers, or other limitations of its vmxnet protocol.

Fourth, setting an interface "down" may not trigger a proper failover. Removing physical connections to force a link inactive may be a better test. If you are using them. With vic(4), there are no cables to pull, unfortunately.

----

All of this is just opinion, of course.

[toxictrash]

Thank you for the answers!!
Yes you are correct, I'm using VMWorkstation to run those test, but I have a phisical machine with two realteck cards in it and the issue is still the same, I looked a lot in google but it doesn't seem like someone else is having the same issue.
Also you were right when I unplug the cable everything is working fine (Thanks for that), but I still don't understand if this is the way it should work.
If you ask me if I put the master card down the other should take its load

Thanks for those answers guys

[s0xxx]

Originally Posted by jggimi

First, I don't think an 802.3ad switch is needed for trunkproto failover, since only one link should normally ever be used at a time.

Yes, you're right - fail-over doesn't require special switch support. My bad.
Somehow when it comes to interface bonding/balancing/failover I think about LACP first.

[jggimi]

If you ask me if I put the master card down the other should take its load

AFAICT, the NIC management layer and the media layer (PHY) are separate entities. You're welcome to take your concern to the Project's official mailing lists -- use tech@ if you include a patch that fixes the OS to produces the result you want; use misc@ if you want to to ask the developers (politely) why the network stack doesn't operate the way you envision it should. See http://www.openbsd.org/mail.html before posting.