[SUMMARY]: How to identify correct device for second NIC?

From: Bryan Hodgson (bhodgson@astea.com)
Date: Wed Oct 14 1998 - 17:08:50 CDT


A number of people pointed out that:

1.) The sysdef info definitely does identify the interface as le1.

2.) SunOS uses the machine address as the MAC address on all interfaces
     (except for qfe interfaces). You can manually reset the MACs on
     the additional interfaces, if you Really Have To (more on this below).

Bottom line: I had configured the interface, and simply hadn't realized it.
(e.g. an external firewall component wasn't really cooperating yet, and had
me fooled).

Thanks to (in no particular order):

Jochen Bern [bern@penthesilea.uni-trier.de]
Rik Schneider [rik@netasset.com]
Timothy Lorenc [lorenct@load.com]
V. Q. Hoang [vqh@dw.lucent.com]
mwang@tech.cicg.ml.com
Bismark Espinoza [bismark@alta.jpl.nasa.gov]
Frank Fiamingo - Columbus [frank.fiamingo@ssds.com]
Bill Hathaway [wdh@poss.com]
Ray Trzaska [rtrzaska@uk.mdis.com]
Brooke King (6532) [jbking@sandia.gov]
Marco Greene [cmgreene@netcom.ca]
Daniel Lorenzini [lorenzd@gcm.com]
Christopher L. Barnard [cbar44@tsg.cbot.com]

Original post is at the end. Un-attributed out-takes from responses that
I found informative follow (tho most everyone said the same thing, one way
or another.):

-------
Welcome to the wonderful world of multi-homed hosts on Sun. All interfaces
on the same box will have the same MAC address. Sun refuses to acknowledge
that this is a bug. Your second interface is le1, but you'll have to
live with the same MAC address on both (unless you want to manually set
one of them to something different)
-------
le (and hme) devices do not have their own mac addresses, and the default is
to
use that derived from the hostid - the mac address can be overridden using
ifconfig le1 ether aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

quad ethernet devices do have their own unique mac addresses, but the
default is
to override these and use that derived from the hostid.
-------
le1 is the correct device. The MAC address is based on the PROM, so by
default it will be the same for all interfaces on a machine. You can set
a different MAC address to use with ifconfig if you want, but since the
interfaces should be on different networks, having duplicate MAC addresses
should not be an issue.
-------
Sun reports the same MAC address as the primary interface for
all NICs. It reads it off the first one and uses it for all.
This should only be a problem if you attach multiple NICs to
the same physical network. In that case you can set a different
MAC address on the others with ifconfig.
-------
le1 should be correct. THe confusion about MAC adresses comes from the
fact that ethernet devices on Sun machines get their MAC adrees from the
machines host-ID as opposed to being set by the manufaturer of the card.

You will need to plumb the interface prior to configuration.

If you need to have both interfaces on the same network (or connected to
separate vlans on the same switch) you will to set the MAC address by
hand:

example% ifconfig le0 ether aa:1:2:3:4:5
-------
Yes. SUNs set all their interfaces to the same MAC (from the Id PROM);
The rationale is that multi-interface SUNs likely have their
interfaces on different segments (so the interfaces don't disturb
each other) while you might want to coordinate ARP tables on a larger
scale somehow (e.g., for some kind of security auditing, a multihomed
proxy ARP server, ...) and get into trouble with a single host showing
up with several MACs.
-------

Original post:

> One of our clients has supplied us a Sparc 20 for certain work. The
machine
> has the regular built-in ethernet port on the motherboard (le0), and a
> second ethernet port (10M, I reckon) on an add-on S-Bus card (which also
> includes a SCSI port (unused)). Solaris 2.6 with recommended patches as
of
> September.
>
> After doing "boot -r", I haven't been able to identify the second NIC.
> "ifconfig [le1|hme0] <address>" produces "ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR:
<whatever>:
> no such interface". Running "ifconfig -a plumb" will let me configure
le1,
> but "ifconfig -a" shows that le1 has the same MAC address as le0.
"sysdef"
> leads me to suspect that the second interface is supposed to be le1 .. but
> "netstat -nr" doesn't show a device associated with the address.
>
> I'm confused. "sysdef -d" output follows. Will summarize.
>
> # sysdef -d
> Node 'SUNW,SPARCstation-20', unit #-1
> Node 'packages', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'disk-label', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'deblocker', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'obp-tftp', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'options', unit #0
> Node 'aliases', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'openprom', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'iommu', unit #0
> Node 'sbus', unit #0
> Node 'espdma', unit #0
> Node 'esp', unit #0
> Node 'sd', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'st', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #0
> Node 'sd', unit #1
> Node 'sd', unit #2 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #3
> Node 'sd', unit #4 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #5 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #6
> Node 'ledma', unit #0
> Node 'le', unit #0
> Node 'SUNW,bpp', unit #0 (no driver)
> Node 'SUNW,DBRIe', unit #0 (no driver)
> Node 'dma', unit #1
> Node 'esp', unit #1
> Node 'sd', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'st', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #15 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #16 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #17 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #18 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #19 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #20 (no driver)
> Node 'sd', unit #21 (no driver)
> Node 'lebuffer', unit #0
> Node 'le', unit #1
> Node 'cgsix', unit #0 (no driver)
> Node 'obio', unit #0
> Node 'zs', unit #0
> Node 'zs', unit #1
> Node 'eeprom', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'counter', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'interrupt', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'SUNW,fdtwo', unit #0 (no driver)
> Node 'auxio', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'power', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'memory', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'virtual-memory', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'eccmemctl', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'SUNW,sx', unit #0 (no driver)
> Node 'TI,TMS390Z55', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'TI,TMS390Z55', unit #-1 (no driver)
> Node 'pseudo', unit #0
> Node 'clone', unit #0
> Node 'ip', unit #0
> Node 'tcp', unit #0
> Node 'udp', unit #0
> Node 'icmp', unit #0
> Node 'arp', unit #0
> Node 'sad', unit #0
> Node 'consms', unit #0
> Node 'conskbd', unit #0
> Node 'wc', unit #0
> Node 'mm', unit #0
> Node 'ptsl', unit #0
> Node 'tl', unit #0
> Node 'cn', unit #0
> Node 'ipdcm', unit #0
> Node 'iwscn', unit #0
> Node 'log', unit #0
> Node 'sy', unit #0
> Node 'ptm', unit #0
> Node 'pts', unit #0
> Node 'ptc', unit #0
> Node 'openeepr', unit #0
> Node 'winlock', unit #0
> Node 'kstat', unit #0
> Node 'vol', unit #0
> Node 'pm', unit #0
> Node 'logindmux', unit #0
> Node 'ksyms', unit #0
>



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