Kernel panic on bonding with multiport NIC (BONDING)

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 1

Situation

After setting up bonding according to SUSE Documentation with multiport NIC randomly a Kernel Panic occours. Bonding is made with

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS='mode=active-backup miimon=10 use_carrier=0'

messages like the following can be found in /var/log/messages

bonding: bond2: Warning: the permanent HWaddr of eth3 - 00:1f:29:c7:54:9c - is still in use by bond2. Set the HWaddr of eth3 to a different address to avoid conflicts.

Resolution

Use the following setting for bonding

BONDING_MODULE_OPTS='mode=1 miimon=100 fail_over_mac=follow use_carrier=1'

one thing is not to use the deprecated ethtools (carrier=1) and the second is explained in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt under "follow or 2" which recommends this setting for multiport nics.

Disclaimer

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