Description of problem: Due to a bug fix published by Jay Vosburgh to better handle setting bond's mac address, backward compatibility is broken. It is impossible to use a new version of ifenslave (1.0.11) to enslave adapters to an old version of bonding (say 20030320 and below) since it requires that the master interface be down but the config application doesn't handle that. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-2.4.20-1.1931.2.231.2.11.ent How reproducible: Use an old version of bonding (e.g. the one supplied in vanilla 2.4.21) with a recent version of ifenslave (e.g. the one found in Jeff's net-drivers-2.4). Steps to Reproduce: 1. insmod bonding mode=1 2. ifconfig bond0 <ip-addr> 3. ifenslave bond0 eth0 Actual results: Operation fails with an error message that bond's mac address couldn't be set from that of the first slave and bond is left without a valid MAC address. Expected results: enslave operation succeeds and bond gets the MAC address of the first slave. Additional info: A bug fix patch was sent by me on June 30th to both Jeff Garzik and jay Vosburgh. It is a slightly modified re-send of a patch we sent on May 29th that didn't make it in.
ISSUE TRACKER 25885 OPENED AS SEV 1
Once this bug is fixed, #98457 needs to be checked again.
Still exists in Beta1 kernel version kernel-2.4.21-1.1931.2.349.2.2.ent a fix can be taken from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/patchkits/2.4/2.4.21-rc8- netdrvr2.patch.bz2