Adding an Alias to Network Bridge

**elpato77** · 07-03-2009, 04:38 PM

Hey,

I need a networking guru's help.

I am trying to setup a bridge and use virtual machines under Ubuntu Jaunty Server, but am having lots of troubles.

I am working remotely on my server through SSH, and as it is 3800 KMs away, I have no physical access.

This is my interfaces file (obviously, X and Y are valid numbers):

Code:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
    address X.Y.61.18
    network X.Y.61.0
    netmask 255.255.255.224
    broadcast X.Y.61.31
    gateway X.Y.61.1
    bridge_ports eth0
    bridge_stp off
    bridge_maxwait 5

auto br0:0
iface br0:0 inet static
    address X.Y.62.118
    netmask 255.255.255.248
    gateway X.Y.62.118

As it is, I can't access the server at all. It doesn't reply to ping, and logging in by SSH times out. Luckily, I wrote a script to change the interfaces file and reboot, so I can work with it some more.

If I comment out br0:0, it works fine.

Now, the data center where the server is located has given me the information which I used, with secondary IP addresses:

X.Y.62.113-118

As I only have a gateway for the primary address, I need to fix the bridge to get it running.

Any suggestions? Thanks

**peter** · 07-04-2009, 02:42 AM

I've never tried this before, but I would think that with bridging you would have to define more than one ethernet interface somewhere.

**elpato77** · 07-04-2009, 03:29 PM

Yes, you're right. I thought the alias would be sufficient, but it wasn't.

Code:

br0       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:22:15:98:37:1a  
          inet addr:X.Y.61.18  Bcast:174.142.61.31  Mask:255.255.255.224
vnet0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 16:ee:9a:43:ba:da  
          inet addr:X.Y.62.118  Bcast:174.142.62.119  Mask:255.255.255.248

I now have a second (virtual) interface.

Code:

$ brctl show
bridge name    bridge id        STP enabled    interfaces
br0        8000.00221598371a    no        eth0
                            vnet0

Bridge is setup.

IP forwarding is enabled in sysctl.conf ...

Yet I am not sure what to do now.

Pinging gives me a "Destination Host Unreachable"

Code:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
X.Y.62.112      *               255.255.255.248 U     0      0        0 vnet0
X.Y.61.0        *               255.255.255.224 U     0      0        0 br0
192.168.122.0   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 virbr0
default         *               0.0.0.0         UG    100    0        0 br0

Routing seems correct, but I am no expert.

I tried setting my gateway on the virtual machine to the address of vnet0 (X.Y.62.118), and to the address I assigned it (X.Y.62.114). Nothing seems to work.

I also tried setting the VPS to the same IP address (.118). When I SSH'd into it, I was connected to the host and not the guest.

Any ideas, anyone? I hope there are a few networking gurus here, because I am really at a loss.

**peter** · 07-04-2009, 04:59 PM

What are you trying to ping? The default gateway doesn't seem to be defined, it should be pointing to the IP address of a router.

**elpato77** · 07-04-2009, 06:40 PM

I'm trying to ping the VPS.

I set the default gateway for it when I built it using vmbuilder, as per these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/serverg...vmbuilder.html

I tried to set it to the address of vnet0, which should be forwarding to eth0 on the virtual machines. I also tried setting it to the address of eth0 on the virtual machine and to the address of br0, all to no avail.

The default gateway is set properly on the host system, as I can SSH into it, ping it, etc.

The gateway for the guest systems is what I am trying to figure out. To me, it should be set to vnet0, as vnet0 should be doing the routing, as they are virtual machines and cannot be linked to a physical router.

vnet0 should forward all requests from br0, which bridges the eth0 (physical) and vnet0 (virtual) adapters, to the eth0 adapters of the appropriate virtual machine.

The problem is that my secondary addresses and my primary address, for the virtual machines and the host system respecitvely are on a different subnet, and I need to get the routing to work properly for the virtual machines to be accessible.

**peter** · 07-05-2009, 06:52 PM

I'm not sure I understand. A bridge is a device on which all interfaces reside on the same subnet. Are you sure you don't want to configure routing?

**elpato77** · 07-05-2009, 07:08 PM

I'm not sure of anything, at this point :P

Yeah, it probably is routing I'm struggling with. I tried to add another route to the table for the secondary network, but that didn't help.

I think what I may need is in fact a tunnel I can attach KVM to.

**elpato77** · 07-06-2009, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by peter

A bridge is a device on which all interfaces reside on the same subnet.

Actually, a bridge just forwards packets at the ethernet level so it doesn't care about the subnet or anything else. So I think my bridge should work with IP Forwarding enabled and the correct route.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Bridge

I also mounted the qcow2 disk image with nbd-client, so I can now read the log / configuration files in the virtual server. Hopefully, I will find something somewhere that eluded me

**elpato77** · 07-16-2009, 08:55 PM

I finally got it!

It seems that the only way for me to add an alias to a bridge is manually.

Code:

sudo ifconfig br0:0 X.Y.62.118 netmask 255.255.255.248 broadcast X.Y.62.119

With the br0 bridge set to the primary IP and IP forwarding enabled, it works like a charm

Now I just have to automate it in some scripts and I should be good to go.

**peter** · 07-17-2009, 04:17 PM

Excellent to hear! I was wondering why the interfaces file wouldn't work. Do you know of any other way to get it automated to work. I'd think the interfaces file would be the most fool proof.