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[Xen-users] Re: Yet another question about multiple NICs [FIXED]

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Subject: [Xen-users] Re: Yet another question about multiple NICs [FIXED]
From: Philippe Combes <Philippe.Combes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 08:34:40 +0100
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Hi all,

This is an old thread already, but I have had higher priorities and I have not been able to check for your last propositions for a few weeks.

I confess that I first considered irrelevant for my case the suggestions of JP P., Thomas J. and Simon H. about the order of the NICs in my domU debian system. I was too confident in my tests... I realized I was wrong when I tried to connect the first vif of a *fresh* domU to eth1 of dom0 (and the 2nd vif to eth0 of dom0). Indeed I had eventually the same symptoms on the problematic subnet. I do not know now what kind of test made me tell you it worked, and I am sorry for this wrong statement.

After that, the questions from Fajar A. N. about the configuration of the switches became still more sensible. I had promised I would perform the test with my laptop and a crossover-cable. And indeed, it worked perfectly with the default way (wrapping the embedded network-bridge script in xen-config.sxp)

Then I had hard time trying to reconfigure the switches, because it was the first time I had to do such things, and I could only use documentation found on the web. No root passwd, etc. Anyway I succeeded at last to deactivate the port security policy and everything is fine now.

Thank you very much to all for your very precious help !
Regards,
Philippe


Philippe Combes wrote:
Dear Xen users,

I have tried for weeks to have a domU connected to both NICs of the
dom0, each in a different LAN. Google gave me plenty of tutos
and HowTos about the subject, including the Xen and the Debian Xen
wiki's, of course. It seems so simple !
Some advise to use a simple wrapper to /etc/xen/network-bridge, others
to let it aside and to set bridges on my own.
But there must be something obvious that I miss, something so obvious
that no manual need to explain it, because I tried every solution and
variant I found on the Internet with no success.

My dom0 first ran CentOS 5.5, Xen 3.0.3. I tried to have eth1 up and configured both in dom0 and in a domU. I never succeeded (details below), so I followed the advice of some colleagues who told me my issues might have come from running a Debian lenny domU on a CentOS dom0 (because the domU used the CentOS kernel instead of the one of Debian lenny, which is more recent).

So now my dom0 runs an up-to-date Debian lenny, with Xen 3.2.1, but I have the same behaviour when trying to get two interfaces in a domU. As I said it before, I tried several configurations, but let's stick for now to one based on the network-bridge script.
In /etc/network/interfaces:
 auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp
 auto eth1
 iface eth1 inet dhcp
In /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp:
 (network-script network-bridge-wrapper)
/etc/xen/scripts/network-bridge-wrapper:
 #!/bin/bash
 dir=$(dirname "$0")
 "$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=0 netdev=eth0 bridge=eth0
 "$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=1 netdev=eth1 bridge=eth1
In domU configuration file:
vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0', 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1' ]

With this configuration, I get both bridges eth<i> configured and usable: I mean I can ping one machine of every LAN through the corresponding interface.

When I start a domU however, the dom0 and the domU are alternatively connected to the LAN of eth1, but mutually exclusively. In other words, the dom0 is connected to the LAN on eth1 for a couple of minutes, but not the domU, and then, with no other reason than inactivity on the interface, it switches to the reverse situation: domU connected, not the dom0. After another couple of minutes of inactivity, back to the first situation, and so on... I noticed that the 'switch' does not occur if the one that is currently connected performs a continuous ping on another machine of the LAN.

This happened with the CentOS too. But I did not try anything else under that distro. Under Debian, I tried to have dom0's eth1 down (no IP), but then the domU's eth1 does not work at all, not even periodically.

I was pretty sure the issue came from the way my bridges were configured, that there was something different with the dom0 primary interface, etc. Hence I tried all solutions I could find on the Internet with no success.
I then made a simple test. Instead of binding domU's eth<i> to dom0's
eth<i>, I bound it to dom0's eth<1-i>: I changed
 vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0',
'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1' ]
to
 vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1',
'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0' ]
I was very surprised to see that dom0's eth0, domU's eth0 and dom0's eth1 were all working normally, not domU's eth1. There was no alternance between dom0's eth0 and domU's eth1 there, probably because there is always some kind of activity on dom0's eth0 (NFS, monitoring).

So it seems that my issue is NOT related to the dom0 bridges, but to the order of the vifs in the domU description. However, in the xend.log file, there is no difference in the way both vifs are processed. [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] INFO (XendDomainInfo:1514) createDevice: vif : {'bridge': 'eth1', 'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C2
', 'uuid': '9dbf60c7-d785-96e2-b036-dc21b669735c'}
[2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:118) DevController: writing {'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C2', 'handle': '0' , 'protocol': 'x86_64-abi', 'backend-id': '0', 'state': '1', 'backend': '/local/domain/0/backend/vif/2/0'} to /local/d
omain/2/device/vif/0.
[2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:120) DevController: writing {'bridge': 'eth1', 'domain': 'inpiftest', 'handle': '0', 'uuid': '9dbf60c7-d785-96e2-b036-dc21b669735c', 'script': '/etc/xen/scripts/vif-bridge', 'mac': '00:16: 3E:55:AF:C2', 'frontend-id': '2', 'state': '1', 'online': '1', 'frontend': '/local/domain/2/device/vif/0'} to /local/d
omain/0/backend/vif/2/0.
[2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] INFO (XendDomainInfo:1514) createDevice: vif : {'bridge': 'eth0', 'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C3
', 'uuid': '1619a9f8-8113-2e3c-e566-9ca9552a3a93'}
[2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:118) DevController: writing {'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C3', 'handle': '1' , 'protocol': 'x86_64-abi', 'backend-id': '0', 'state': '1', 'backend': '/local/domain/0/backend/vif/2/1'} to /local/d
omain/2/device/vif/1.
[2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:120) DevController: writing {'bridge': 'eth0', 'domain': 'inpiftest', 'handle': '1', 'uuid': '1619a9f8-8113-2e3c-e566-9ca9552a3a93', 'script': '/etc/xen/scripts/vif-bridge', 'mac': '00:16: 3E:55:AF:C3', 'frontend-id': '2', 'state': '1', 'online': '1', 'frontend': '/local/domain/2/device/vif/1'} to /local/d
omain/0/backend/vif/2/1.

There I am stuck, and it is very frustrating. It looks so simple when reading at tutos, that I clearly missed something obvious, but what ? Any clue, any track to follow down will be welcome, truly. Please do not hesitate to ask me for relevant logs, or for any experiment you would think useful.

Thanks for your help,
Philippe.

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