RHEL6: connectivity to a single IP Address may fail when arp is disabled and renabled for an interface.

Solution In Progress - Updated -

Issue

  • The following sequence of commands results in the a remote IP Address being inaccessible.
  • ping hosta where hosta is another machine on the same subnet as ethX.
  • ifconfig ethX -arp
  • Now wait for the arp entry for hosta to expire.
    • arp -an
  • Now ping hosta and it will timeout.
  • Stop the ping and re-enable arp on ethX.
    • ifconfig ethX arp
  • At this point hosta will remain inaccessible.
  • It should be noted that alias interfaces like ethX:0 are also affected.

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

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