Subject: [RFC] ip autoconfig: allow specifying a list of devices rather than one or all

From: Chris Friesen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:35:51 -0600

We have an embedded system that boots of the network.  This system has a 
pair of bonded gigE links used for booting and management, and a pair of 
bonded 10G links used for data traffic.

What we're seeing is that when ip_auto_config() calls
ic_open_devs() to open up all the network ports, the data ports 
immediately start getting *hammered* with traffic, we get "nf_conntrack: 
table full, dropping packet", errors, and we sometimes lose the DHCP 
responses because of this.

We need to be able to boot off of both the gigE ports for redundancy, so 
it seems like it might be a reasonable idea to extend the "ip=" boot arg 
to allow specifying a list of devices rather than choosing between a 
single device or all of them.

Thoughts?  Anyone ever done this?

Chris

-- 

Chris Friesen
Software Designer

3500 Carling Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario K2H 8E9
www.genband.com