Problems on trunk

[Marius Van Deventer - Umzimkulu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Guenther [mailto:kousue at gmail.com]
> Sent: 04 July 2006 09:58 AM
> To: Marius Van Deventer - Umzimkulu; Openbsd-newbies at sfobug.org
> Subject: Re: Problems on trunk
> 
> On 7/4/06, Marius Van Deventer - Umzimkulu <mvdeventer at illovo.co.za>
> wrote:
> > Hi all
> >
> >
> >
> > I have tried to experiment with trunk (to see how it works) and I
get
> > this problem.
> >
> >
> > I issue the command:
> > ifconfig trunk0 trunkport pcn0 trunkport pcn1 10.64.15.250 netmask
> > 255.255.254.0
> >
> >
> > After that I expect my trunk0 to function as a network interface,
but it
> > (and my physical interfaces) can not send or receive anything. If I
try
> > to ping anyone I get the error message: device is busy.
> >
> >
> >
> > Note the unusual subnet. Is this a possible cause?
> >
> > I tried to type ifconfig pcn* up for each interface before issuing
the
> > above command but to no avail.
> >
> > In any case, what I really need is some more reading material on
trunk.
> > Does anyone have a howto, a case study or any other material I can
use
> > to add to the knowledge I have already gained from the man pages?
Google
> > has made me none the wiser Also let me know if I need to add any
info to
> > this post, dmesg, info on network structure etc.
> 
> Hi Marius,
> 
> I'm sorry no one answered you on misc at . You will have a worse response
> here, but maybe I can help point you in the right direction. I do not
> know much about trunk either so this will be good for me too.
> 
> Do not just try ping, try actually opening the raw device and writing
> to it (or use /dev/bpfN); use both simple shell methods (echo blah >
> /dev/device) and writing programs (fd = open("/dev/device"); write(fd,
> "blah")). Try with different subnets. Try with only one interface in
> the trunk, or zero.
> 
> -Nick

OK, so it seems I missed something.

The interfaces need to be marked up, but not only that. They also need
to be completely unconfigured. I did not see this anywhere in the man
pages, but I suppose it makes sense.

This means that the hostname files for your physical interfaces must NOT
contain the 'inet <ip> <netmask> NONE' line. It must simply contain the
word 'up'.

So in my case:

#cat /etc/hostname.bce0 
#up
#
#cat /etc/hostname.ne3
#up
#
#cat /etc/hostname.trunk0
#inet 10.64.15.75 255.255.254.0 NONE trunkproto failover trunkport bce0
trunkport ne3
#

And it works!