Bond modes 5 and 6 (balance-tlb / balance-alb) unsupported by ibmveth.

This document (7022451) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

Situation

Configure bond modes 5 and 6 (balance-tlb / balance-alb) on ibmveth interfaces using YaST.

Observe the following messages appearing in dmesg:

[ 9898.622556] ibmveth 30000003 eth9: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
[ 9899.722552] ibmveth 30000002 eth0: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
[ 9899.722556] ibmveth 30000003 eth9: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
[ 9900.822555] ibmveth 30000002 eth0: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
[ 9900.822560] ibmveth 30000003 eth9: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
[ 742.592642] ibmveth 30000002 eth0: tx: h_send_logical_lan failed with rc=-4
...

Resolution

A work-around may and/or more detailed error message may be investigated in the future, but for now these configurations are unsupported by ibmveth.

Cause

There is a conflict with the tlb/alb bonding configuration and Power firmware.

In short, the bonding driver in tlb/alb mode sends 'Ethernet Loopback' packets with both the source and destination MAC addresses listed as the Virtual Ethernet MAC address.

These packets are not supported by Power firmware, leading to this error returned by the H_SEND_LOGICAL_LAN.

Disclaimer

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