Bond fails to start with "Error: Enslave failed"

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2
  • Bonded network interfaces

Issue

  • Bond interface fails to start with the error:
"Illegal operation: The specified slave interface 'eth0' is already a slave
Master 'bond0', Slave 'eth0': Error: Enslave failed"

Resolution

Do not try to manually enslave devices into bonds in /etc/rc.local.

Refer to the configuration article for correct bond configuration:

Root Cause

Bond configured incorrectly in rc.local.

Diagnostic Steps

Perform an RPM verification of the initscripts package:

rpm -V initscripts

This will return a list of files which belong to the initscripts package which have been modified.

rpm -V initscripts
S.5....T.  c /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Modified rc.local file contains:

#!/bin/sh
touch /var/lock/subsys/local
ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1
/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/custom/bin/start.sh

The line ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth1 is not the correct method to configure a bond in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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