Astro Shapes Information Technology Blog - Comments

meLon: Port Bonding with Linux - Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (meLon) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:20:49 -0400

Awesome.

"UPDATE (05/22/2008): I have been notified that Ubuntu 8.04 has fixed the above arhitecture problem. If you are attempting this on the newest version of Ubuntu, perform the previous step in this file instead: /etc/modprobe.d/arch/. Special thanks to Dr. Silk for the information!"

This is the only tutorial I could find at the time with this KEY information :D

Craig Deering: Port Bonding with Linux - Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (Craig Deering) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:21:34 -0400

I have never found a good way to handle multiple gateways connected right to the Linux computer. When I was researching it, it didn't look like Linux supported multiple default gateways.

If you are trying to spread the load across those two DSL connections, you might have to use a different method then the bonding module. Maybe with a routing protocol?

If you don't care about one of them being active all the time, simply pick one gateway and write a script that grabs something off the the internet, like the Google index page. If it fails, remove the default gateway and add back the other DSL connection.

Sorry I couldn't be more help. If anyone out there has any suggestions, I'd like to know how to do this as well.

JOSE: Port Bonding with Linux - Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (JOSE) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:28:34 -0400

hi, well, in this sample you are using a static ip and one gateway in bond0 (192.168.1.1). But if I have a two dsl routers? what gateway can I to use??
eth0-->192.168.1.254 (Gateway IP)
eth1-->192.168.3.254 (Gateway IP)
eth2-->LAN

Thanks for any help!!!

Rodney Brim: I.T. and MBO (Management By Objective)

nospam@example.com (Rodney Brim) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:53:17 -0500

Wade,
I enjoyed your comments. You made an interesting transition, moving from MBO (managing by objectives) to managing by results. There's an intereting gap there, which we've found that basic office tools like email and spreadsheets don't fill very well. E.g. it's hard to get real-time information on the results so that you have an accurate feel for what's working and what isn't in pursuit of the objective. I wonder if you experience the same gap? We use ManagePro to fill that gap.
Rodney Brim,
www.managepro.com/blog

Craig Deering: Remote Management Card with Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (Craig Deering) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:39:45 -0500

I found the Tyan documentation for the M3291 to be a little weak. I ran into trouble the first few times I did this and finally came up with a formula that works every time. I am not familiar with your particular server enclosure, but I'll bet the routine is the same.

One difference with your server from mine is that you don't have the Broadcom chipset for your NIC's. I had to also flash that to the newest version or I couldn't even poll the LAN settings.

Here are a few things to check with the M3291:

1) I had to boot using a Windows 98 floppy and boot to a DOS command line with CDROM support. After flashing the SMDC, you need to run a program called "UH8.exe". There are DOS and Linux command line versions of this program, but I've only successfully made this work using "UH8.exe". The path on the CD for me was "D:\utility\dos\uh8.exe".

Once inside this program (which displayed a lot of goofy characters to the screen), I had to install the configuration script. It was the last menu option called "Config Script". Once in there, type "m3291.cfg" and it will load the default settings onto the card. If I skipped this step, I could never make the user accounts and passwords work.

2) Next in the "uh8.exe" utility, go to the "Lan Config" option. I've discovered a few things about this that the documentation doesn't cover very well. The biggest of which is that if you want to talk to the SMDC card AND the server at the same time, you need to set up a unique IP address and unique MAC address.

Here's the way I do it and it works every time. If you open the server case, the two NIC ports are at the back labelled with two MAC addresses. The port with the lowest MAC value is the primary port of the server. This is the ONLY port that the SMDC card will respond to so make certain you have a CAT5 cable attached to that port and connected to a switch on your local network. You can test this by plugging a cable into it with power off to the server and the link light will come on and show activity.

I then take that MAC address and mangle the number a little and put that into the LAN config. So if your MAC address of that port is "00:11:22:33:44:55", I put something like "00:11:AA:33:44:55" into the LAN config page. There is a possibility of a duplicate MAC on your network, but the odds are very small. You might want to search them out and make certain what ever you picked out is unique.

I use a /16 network so I also give it a unique IP address. It's easier for me if I change the third part of the IP. So if the server IP is going to be 172.16.5.30, I might set the SMDC IP to 172.16.6.30. Again, this is a preference on your part.

3) The Broadcast ARP option always seems to be "0" when I start the process, but always ends up being a "1" when it's over. I don't really have a suggestion here but I will tell you that having this enabled has always worked for me.

4) Once you save this, you will need to set up the user account passwords on the "User and Password Setting" screen. But this is not required for your ping tests.

At this point in time, you should be able to ping the SMDC card with the server power on or off. A great test is to power the server off and try to connect from the Tyan management console with the user "Admin". If it connects, you should be able to turn the power on. After the server starts up, you should be able to ping both addresses and access both of them simultaneously.

Once these steps were performed, I found I could configure anything I wanted to from the Linux command line using the "uh8l" command found on the disk.

Good luck!

Sascha Willuweit: Remote Management Card with Ubuntu Server

nospam@example.com (Sascha Willuweit) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:34:22 -0500

I'm trying to get the M3291 to work with my GT24 B2932 on Linux (Debian Etch) to no avail. I've updated the BIOS, the BMC firmware and configured the network stack. After that, I was able to connect IPMI locally (loading ipmi_si.ko), but have no luck neither pinging it nor ipmi over Ethernet (via lan, lanplus). Did you have any such problems? Any suggestions? How did you setup the network?

Thanks,
-Sascha