[netcf-devel] Re: new to netcf - maybe this is answered in the documentation, however
On 01-Nov-16 17:48, Laine Stump wrote:
On 11/01/2016 12:22 PM, Michael Felt wrote:
> I have done some superficial reading on netcf - and I notice several
> comments on bridiging. Found out what it is and I do not expect it on
> AIX. There is a specialized partition (VIOS) that provides that
> function (so-called Shared Ethernet Adapter aka SEA) by bridging the
> virtual LAN(s) with a physical port or ether-channel (pseudo) port.
>
> What I have not noticed yet, common in AIX - is what is called an NIB
> - or Network Interface Backup. This is an additional feature of the
> AIX ether-channel pseudo device.
Is this similar to a bond in Linux? If so, possibly it could be
represented as a device in netcf
Yes, looks very similiar. This gives a good summary of what has been
around since 1998 (if not earlier). In 2001-2002 (with AIX 5.2 things
got easier).
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_61/com.ibm.aix.netw...
>
> VLAN does exist in AIX, just done differently.
>
> All in all, I expect most aspects to map well.
>
> So, two questions:
> a) does netcf have a description for (automated) network interface
> backup (yes or no are fine answers);
If it's similar to a bond, then yes. If it's close, possibly it could
be made to fit into that model.
If a bond is a pseudo device (e.g., ent0 is the
physical adapter and
ent1 is the vlan aware adapter things will map quite easily. From what I
have seen in documents it looks as if eth0 is vlan unaware, and
eth0.XXXX is the vlan aware adapter - that, I assume, also has an an IP
address.
There are straightforward commands on AIX to define "all" of this -
generally only one key command be used: mkdev. The two other commands:
chdev to change things, and rmdev too disable (default aka unavailable)
or delete (clear information from ODM as well).
For an introduction see:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_aix_61/com.ibm.aix.network...
> b) could someone give a short listing of the interface definitions
> netcf has implemented? I will read the documentation, but a bulleted
> list of topics helps me get to the important items first.
Documentation of the XML is unfortunately nearly nonexistent :-( which
I take as solely my responsibility. There has just always been
something more pressing and/or interesting to do, and I hate creating
new documentaion (and also there's been very little demand). Because
of that, the best documentation is the test files in tests/interface.
There are 4 main types of interface supported by netcf:
ethernet
bond - can be the parent of multiple ethernet devices
bridge - can be the parent of multiple ethernet, vlan and/or bond
devices
vlan - can reference a single ethernet, vlan, or bridge device
There should be examples of each of these in the files in
tests/interface.
Well, try again tomorrow to get it to build asis, and then look to
make
it suitable as a driver for configuration.