FreeBSD + carp on VMWare ESX

[Max Laier]

On Monday 20 July 2009 01:25:03 Matthew Grooms wrote:
> The other options you mention are enabled by default. This problem
> also effects pre vSphere versions but only under certain
> circumstances. Others claim this is only an issue when NIC teaming is
> in use. However, I disabled this feature and still experience the
> problem without the patch applied.
>
> I'll be happy to post the config when I'm back in front of the
> computer. It's not a configuration problem. I'm not new to FreeBSD or
> carp and have quite a bit of time invested trying to get this to work.
>
> Have a look at the vmware forums. A lot of folks have reported the
> problem in great detail and, as far as I can tell, have yet to get
> this working.

There is clearly something very wrong with how the vswitch works and it's not 
really FreeBSD's job to work around these issues.  The patch you posted is 
rather intrusive and certainly not something we want in the tree.  You should 
talk to VMWare's support to fix the obvious short-comings in the vswitch 
design.

As for your patch - you want "IF_ADDR_[UN]LOCK(ifp);" around walking the 
address list.  Don't forget to unlock before the return.

> -Matthew
>
> On Jul 19, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Andrew Snow <andrew at modulus.org> wrote:
> > Matthew Grooms wrote:
> >> I was having problems running carp on VMWare ESX 4 and did a little
> >> investigative work to determine the cause of the problem.
> >
> > If have tested CARP on ESX 3.5u4 successfully with a 32-bit FreeBSD
> > guest with e1000 vNICs.
> >
> > As well as turning on promiscuous mode on the vSwitch, you have to
> > enable "MAC Address changes" and "Forged transmits" as CARP requires
> > these to work properly.
> >
> > Unless this is a vSphere-specific problem I must suspect your
> > configuration as the problem.  Do you want to post your CARP config?
> >
> >
> > - Andrew
>
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