Install the required package ifenslave
$ sudo apt-get install ifenslave ethtool
To prevent issues make sure that the bonding module is listed in the /etc/modules file. In this way the module will be loaded at boot time.
$ cat /etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
# Parameters can be specified after the module name.
lp
rtc
bonding
Configure the network with the new bond0 interface.
$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
bond-master bond0
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet manual
bond-master bond0
auto bond0
iface bond0 inet manual
address 172.17.16.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 172.17.16.1
bond-miimon 100
bond-mode balance-alb
bond-slaves eth0 eth1
I configured here with the balance-alb mode that is able to balance the outgoing and incoming traffic without any special switch support, but the network drivers must support ethtool to retrieve the speed from them.
The common bonding modes that are very used are:
– active-backup
– balance-alb
– 802.3ad
You should check the bonding documentation and the features of each mode here:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt
To check that the new bond0 interface is working:
$ sudo cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0
Ethernet Channel Bonding Driver: v3.7.1 (April 27, 2011)
Bonding Mode: adaptive load balancing
Primary Slave: None
Currently Active Slave: eth0
MII Status: up
MII Polling Interval (ms): 100
Up Delay (ms): 0
Down Delay (ms): 0
Slave Interface: eth0
MII Status: up
Speed: 10000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 1
Permanent HW addr: 0c:c4:7a:34:e8:a2
Slave queue ID: 0
Slave Interface: eth1
MII Status: up
Speed: 10000 Mbps
Duplex: full
Link Failure Count: 1
Permanent HW addr: 0c:c4:7a:34:e8:a3
Slave queue ID: 0