This is an old revision of the document!

ifenslave

The ifenslave program is used to set up bonding for network devices. This must be used in conjunction with support for bonding in the Linux kernel.

If built as a module, load it:

modprobe bonding

In Ubuntu, set the module to be loaded on boot. Add bonding to /etc/modules.

Program syntax is ifenslave [options] master slave [slave..].

Options include:

-a - show information about all devices
-c - change active state
-d - remove slave interface from the bonding device
-f - force action, even if one of the interfaces doesn't look like an Ethernet device
-v - verbose output

An example of creating a bonding device, using two interfaces, where eth0 is the master and eth1 is the slave:

ifenslave eth0 eth1

The new device name is bond0, and can be set as normal using ifconfig, ip, ifup, etc.

Check the bonding interface:

cat /proc/net/bonding/bond0