Ifenslave Uses in Linux

ifenslave – Attach and detach slave network devices to a bonding device.

Description

ifenslave is a tool to attach and detach slave network devices to a bonding device. A bonding device will act like a normal Ethernet network device to the kernel, but will send out the packets via the slave devices using a simple round-robin scheduler. This allows for simple load-balancing, identical to “channel bonding” or “trunking” techniques used in switches.

The kernel must have support for bonding devices for ifenslave to be useful.

Options

-a, –all-interfaces
Show information about all interfaces.
-c, –change-active
Change active slave.

-d, –detach
Removes slave interfaces from the bonding device.

-f
Force actions to be taken if one of the specified interfaces appears not to belong to an Ethernet device.

-h
Display a help message and exit.

-u
Show usage information and exit.

-v, –verbose
Print warning and debug messages.

-V, –version
Show version information and exit.
If not options are given, the default action will be to enslave interfaces.

Example

The following example shows how to setup a bonding device and enslave two real Ethernet devices to it:

# modprobe bonding
# ifconfig bond0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.0.0
# ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1

By Bibhuti Bhusan