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rookie099
Asked: 2018-01-06 05:50:14 +0800 CST

Is Debian package ifenslave really necessary for bonding?

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This piece of Debian documentation states that package ifenslave is necessary for bonding:

First install the ifenslave package, necessary to enable bonding

Yet I know of two Debian 7.10 (wheezy) hosts where dpkg --get-selections | grep ifenslave returns ifenslave-2.6 install (i.e. package is not installed) and there are multiple entries /proc/net/bonding/* with MII Status: up.

So is package ifenslave really necessary for bonding or is it not?

debian

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    No, the ifenslave package is not required on Debian systems. From that package's README.Debian (Debian 9 system):

    [The] best way to configure bonding is via the files in /sys/class/net/$master/bonding/. This Debian package therefore does not contain the binary from the kernel sources, but provides a shell script with identical functionality. ...

    You can also enslave interfaces using Debian's /etc/network/interfaces file:

    ...

    Using the /etc/networking/interfaces approach results in bonding being configured by setting values in /sys. The ifenslave approach merely provides a shell script to make configuration easier.

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