Interface Bonding on Debian

This step by step guide is for configuring interface bonding on Debian based operating systems.

For the following guide we will use the following data and assume that you are running all commands as the root user:

TypeValue
Primary interfaceem1
Secondary interfaceem2
Bond interfacebond0
IP Address192.0.2.2
Netmask255.255.255.0
Gateway192.0.2.1
Primary MAC address00:00:5E:00:53:00

Step-by-step guide

How to do it:

  1. Determine whether the bonding module is loaded and package ifenslave is installed:
lsmod | grep bonding dpkg-query -l | grep ifenslave
  1. If it is loaded and ifenslave is installed, go to step 3, otherwise:
apt-get install ifenslave modprobe bonding && echo "bonding" >> /etc/modules
  1. With the bonding module loaded into the kernel we need to determine what the interfaces are called:
ls /sys/class/net/
  1. From this list we need to select which interfaces we are going to use in the bond (the slaves). In most cases this will be the first two interfaces (eth0 & eth1, em1 & em2, eno0 & eno1 etc.)
    Debian uses a single file to manage the interface configurations, as such we can simply edit the file and create the bond in a single step.
auto eth0 
     iface eth0 inet manual 

auto eth1 
     iface eth1 inet manual 

auto bond0 
     iface bond0 inet static 
     address 192.0.2.2 
     gateway 192.0.2.1 
     netmask 255.255.255.0 
     bond-mode 802.3ad 
     bond-miimon 100 
     bond-downdelay 200 
     bond-updelay 200 
     bond-lacp-rate 1 
     bond-slaves eth0 eth1 
     dns-nameservers 192.0.2.53
  1. With our interfaces configured we need to restart networking to bring up the bond and start using it:
Debian 6/Ubuntu 12: "/etc/init.d/networking stop; /etc/init.d/networking start" 
Debian 7/Ubuntu 14: "/etc/init.d/networking stop; /etc/init.d/networking start" 
Debian 8/Ubuntu 16: "systemctl restart networking"

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