[Xen-users] Yet another question about multiple NICs

[Philippe Combes <Philippe.Combes@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Xen users,

I have tried for weeks to have a domU connected to both NICs of the
dom0, each in a different LAN. Google gave me plenty of tutos
and HowTos about the subject, including the Xen and the Debian Xen
wiki's, of course. It seems so simple !
Some advise to use a simple wrapper to /etc/xen/network-bridge, others
to let it aside and to set bridges on my own.
But there must be something obvious that I miss, something so obvious
that no manual need to explain it, because I tried every solution and
variant I found on the Internet with no success.

My dom0 first ran CentOS 5.5, Xen 3.0.3. I tried to have eth1 up and 
configured both in dom0 and in a domU. I never succeeded (details 
below), so I followed the advice of some colleagues who told me my 
issues might have come from running a Debian lenny domU on a CentOS 
dom0 (because the domU used the CentOS kernel instead of the one of 
Debian lenny, which is more recent).
So now my dom0 runs an up-to-date Debian lenny, with Xen 3.2.1, but I 
have the same behaviour when trying to get two interfaces in a domU. 
As I said it before, I tried several configurations, but let's stick 
for now to one based on the network-bridge script.
In /etc/network/interfaces:
 auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp
 auto eth1
 iface eth1 inet dhcp
In /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp:
 (network-script network-bridge-wrapper)
/etc/xen/scripts/network-bridge-wrapper:
 #!/bin/bash
 dir=$(dirname "$0")
 "$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=0 netdev=eth0 bridge=eth0
 "$dir/network-bridge" "$@" vifnum=1 netdev=eth1 bridge=eth1
In domU configuration file:
 vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0', 
'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1' ]
With this configuration, I get both bridges eth<i> configured and 
usable: I mean I can ping one machine of every LAN through the 
corresponding interface.
When I start a domU however, the dom0 and the domU are alternatively 
connected to the LAN of eth1, but mutually exclusively. In other 
words, the dom0 is connected to the LAN on eth1 for a couple of 
minutes, but not the domU, and then, with no other reason than 
inactivity on the interface, it switches to the reverse situation: 
domU connected, not the dom0. After another couple of minutes of 
inactivity, back to the first situation, and so on...
I noticed that the 'switch' does not occur if the one that is 
currently connected performs a continuous ping on another machine of 
the LAN.
This happened with the CentOS too. But I did not try anything else 
under that distro. Under Debian, I tried to have dom0's eth1 down (no 
IP), but then the domU's eth1 does not work at all, not even periodically.
I was pretty sure the issue came from the way my bridges were 
configured, that there was something different with the dom0 primary 
interface, etc. Hence  I tried all solutions I could find on the 
Internet with no success.
I then made a simple test. Instead of binding domU's eth<i> to dom0's
eth<i>, I bound it to dom0's eth<1-i>: I changed
 vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0',
'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1' ]
to
 vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C3,bridge=eth1',
'mac=00:16:3E:55:AF:C2,bridge=eth0' ]
I was very surprised to see that dom0's eth0, domU's eth0 and dom0's 
eth1 were all working normally, not domU's eth1. There was no 
alternance between dom0's eth0 and domU's eth1 there, probably because 
there is always some kind of activity on dom0's eth0 (NFS, monitoring).
So it seems that my issue is NOT related to the dom0 bridges, but to 
the order of the vifs in the domU description. However, in the 
xend.log file, there is no difference in the way both vifs are processed.
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] INFO (XendDomainInfo:1514) createDevice: 
vif : {'bridge': 'eth1', 'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C2
', 'uuid': '9dbf60c7-d785-96e2-b036-dc21b669735c'}
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:118) DevController: 
writing {'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C2', 'handle': '0'
, 'protocol': 'x86_64-abi', 'backend-id': '0', 'state': '1', 
'backend': '/local/domain/0/backend/vif/2/0'} to /local/d
omain/2/device/vif/0.
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:120) DevController: 
writing {'bridge': 'eth1', 'domain': 'inpiftest',
'handle': '0', 'uuid': '9dbf60c7-d785-96e2-b036-dc21b669735c', 
'script': '/etc/xen/scripts/vif-bridge', 'mac': '00:16:
3E:55:AF:C2', 'frontend-id': '2', 'state': '1', 'online': '1', 
'frontend': '/local/domain/2/device/vif/0'} to /local/d
omain/0/backend/vif/2/0.
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] INFO (XendDomainInfo:1514) createDevice: 
vif : {'bridge': 'eth0', 'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C3
', 'uuid': '1619a9f8-8113-2e3c-e566-9ca9552a3a93'}
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:118) DevController: 
writing {'mac': '00:16:3E:55:AF:C3', 'handle': '1'
, 'protocol': 'x86_64-abi', 'backend-id': '0', 'state': '1', 
'backend': '/local/domain/0/backend/vif/2/1'} to /local/d
omain/2/device/vif/1.
 [2010-12-16 14:51:27 3241] DEBUG (DevController:120) DevController: 
writing {'bridge': 'eth0', 'domain': 'inpiftest',
'handle': '1', 'uuid': '1619a9f8-8113-2e3c-e566-9ca9552a3a93', 
'script': '/etc/xen/scripts/vif-bridge', 'mac': '00:16:
3E:55:AF:C3', 'frontend-id': '2', 'state': '1', 'online': '1', 
'frontend': '/local/domain/2/device/vif/1'} to /local/d
omain/0/backend/vif/2/1.

There I am stuck, and it is very frustrating. It looks so simple when 
reading at tutos, that I clearly missed something obvious, but what ?
Any clue, any track to follow down will be welcome, truly. Please do 
not hesitate to ask me for relevant logs, or for any experiment you 
would think useful.
Thanks for your help,
Philippe.

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