crossbow discuss - Sep 2006 - creating a vnic to represent the factory MAC address

How do I create a vnic that represents the factory assigned MAC
address of my physical nic?

The bge device in my system (x2100) appears to support 4 MAC
addresses.  The driver reserves the first as the
''primary/default''
address and allows manipulation of the other three via the
MAC_CAPAB_MULTIADDRESS interface.

I''d like to use vnics on this system, as I have Xen guest domains and
will match a vnic with each domain.

Presuming that it''s no longer appropriate to plumb
''bge0'' under IP
(given that I''ll want to also use the physical nic to create vnics)
I''m struggling to figure out how I might create a vnic to represent
this ''slot 0'', in order that I can plumb it under IP.

dme.
-- 
David Edmondson, Sun Microsystems, http://www.dme.org

> How do I create a vnic that represents the factory assigned MAC
> address of my physical nic?
> 
> The bge device in my system (x2100) appears to support 4 MAC
> addresses.  The driver reserves the first as the
''primary/default''
> address and allows manipulation of the other three via the
> MAC_CAPAB_MULTIADDRESS interface.
> 
> I''d like to use vnics on this system, as I have Xen guest domains
and
> will match a vnic with each domain.
> 
> Presuming that it''s no longer appropriate to plumb
''bge0'' under IP
> (given that I''ll want to also use the physical nic to create
vnics)
> I''m struggling to figure out how I might create a vnic to
represent
> this ''slot 0'', in order that I can plumb it under IP.
This support is coming. Using dladm, you will be able to see all the
mac addresses and choose which one the vnic is going to use. We will
also do a ''dladm create-vnic -m factory'' where one of teh
factory
available addresses will be picked.

I''ll post the man pages sometime over the weekend.

Cheers,
Sunay
 
> 
> dme.
> -- 
> David Edmondson, Sun Microsystems, http://www.dme.org
> _______________________________________________
> crossbow-discuss mailing list
> crossbow-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/crossbow-discuss
> 

-- 
Sunay Tripathi
Sr. Staff Engineer
Solaris Core Networking Technologies 
Sun MicroSystems Inc.

Solaris Networking:	http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/networking
Project Crossbow:	http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/crossbow

David Edmondson wrote:
> How do I create a vnic that represents the factory assigned MAC
> address of my physical nic?
>
> The bge device in my system (x2100) appears to support 4 MAC
> addresses.  The driver reserves the first as the
''primary/default''
> address and allows manipulation of the other three via the
> MAC_CAPAB_MULTIADDRESS interface.
>
> I''d like to use vnics on this system, as I have Xen guest domains
and
> will match a vnic with each domain.
>
> Presuming that it''s no longer appropriate to plumb
''bge0'' under IP
> (given that I''ll want to also use the physical nic to create
vnics)
> I''m struggling to figure out how I might create a vnic to
represent
> this ''slot 0'', in order that I can plumb it under IP.
>   
In the implementation, the address in slot 0 is for the regular NIC. 
Only the other
3 slots can be used for VNICs. So you can use bge for slot 0 and create 
3 vnics using
the other 3 slots.

-krgopi
> dme.
>

* rajagopal.kunhappan at sun.com [2006-09-29 18:25:59]
> In the implementation, the address in slot 0 is for the regular
> NIC. Only the other 3 slots can be used for VNICs. So you can use
> bge for slot 0 and create 3 vnics using the other 3 slots.
So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?

How does loopback between (say) vnic1 and bge0 work in this case?

dme.
-- 
David Edmondson, Sun Microsystems, http://www.dme.org

David Edmondson wrote On 10/01/06 23:18,:
>* rajagopal.kunhappan at sun.com [2006-09-29 18:25:59]
>  
>
>>In the implementation, the address in slot 0 is for the regular
>>NIC. Only the other 3 slots can be used for VNICs. So you can use
>>bge for slot 0 and create 3 vnics using the other 3 slots.
>>    
>>
>
>So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
>should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?
>
>How does loopback between (say) vnic1 and bge0 work in this case?
>  
>
I''m not sure we want to allow that directly. At east not when vnic1 is 
owned by an exclusive stack.
see 6476487 (apology for folks without access to the crossbow/network 
bugster product/category)

    Kais.
>dme.
>  
>

David Edmondson wrote:
> * rajagopal.kunhappan at sun.com [2006-09-29 18:25:59]
>   
>> In the implementation, the address in slot 0 is for the regular
>> NIC. Only the other 3 slots can be used for VNICs. So you can use
>> bge for slot 0 and create 3 vnics using the other 3 slots.
>>     
>
> So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
> should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?
>   
Correct.
> How does loopback between (say) vnic1 and bge0 work in this case?
>   
That does not work currently. A bug should be filed if there isn''t one 
already.
There is some work to be done in the interaction between regular NICs 
and vnics.

-krgopi

On Oct 2, 2006, at 12:18 AM, David Edmondson wrote:
> * rajagopal.kunhappan at sun.com [2006-09-29 18:25:59]
>> In the implementation, the address in slot 0 is for the regular
>> NIC. Only the other 3 slots can be used for VNICs. So you can use
>> bge for slot 0 and create 3 vnics using the other 3 slots.
>
> So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
> should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?
With the current bits, yes. With the changes I''m working on and will  
be released in a future code drop, only VNICs will be allowed to be  
created on the underlying NIC. So you''ll have to create a new
''vnic4''
and use it instead of ''bge0'' in your example above.
>
> How does loopback between (say) vnic1 and bge0 work in this case?
This is currently not possible, a separate VNIC has to be created and  
used instead of bge0.

Nicolas.

-- 
Nicolas Droux, Solaris Kernel Networking
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://blogs.sun.com/droux

* Kais.Belgaied at sun.com [2006-10-02 17:25:41]
>>So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
>>should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?
>>
>>How does loopback between (say) vnic1 and bge0 work in this case?
>
> I''m not sure we want to allow that directly. At east not when
vnic1
> is owned by an exclusive stack.
My application doesn''t have a protocol stack sitting above the vnics
(though I''m not sure how that''s relevant).

* Nicolas.Droux at Sun.COM [2006-10-02 18:31:19]
>> So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
>> should be opening ''bge0'', ''vnic1'',
''vnic2'' and ''vnic3''?
>
> With the current bits, yes. With the changes I''m working on and
will
> be released in a future code drop, only VNICs will be allowed to be
> created on the underlying NIC. So you''ll have to create a new
> ''vnic4'' and use it instead of ''bge0'' in
your example above.
The actual mechanism for creating ''vnic4'' needs a bit of
thought in
order that it works well with the underlying MAC address manipulation
(which I guess leads us back to Sunay''s original comment).

dme.
-- 
David Edmondson, Sun Microsystems, http://www.dme.org

On Oct 2, 2006, at 11:37 PM, David Edmondson wrote:
>>> So if I want to create 3 vnics and use the bge interface as well, I
>>> should be opening ''bge0'',
''vnic1'', ''vnic2'' and
''vnic3''?
>>
>> With the current bits, yes. With the changes I''m working on
and will
>> be released in a future code drop, only VNICs will be allowed to be
>> created on the underlying NIC. So you''ll have to create a new
>> ''vnic4'' and use it instead of
''bge0'' in your example above.
>
> The actual mechanism for creating ''vnic4'' needs a bit of
thought in
> order that it works well with the underlying MAC address manipulation
> (which I guess leads us back to Sunay''s original comment).
Yes, it''s currently still work in progress and the pieces will fall  
into place. When the final implementation of the dladm(1M) -m option  
is available, you will be able to specify that the factory MAC  
address of bge0 must be used for vnic4, for example.

Nicolas.

-- 
Nicolas Droux, Solaris Kernel Networking
Sun Microsystems, Inc. http://blogs.sun.com/droux