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Date:      Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:33:27 -0700
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   em(4) losing link when if_bridge(4) addm/deletem are used
Message-ID:  <20070328033327.GA65649@icarus.home.lan>

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Firstly, I apologise ahead of time for sounding brash, but for the past
week I have been fighting with the simple concept of Ethernet bridging
over a VPN/secure tunnel, and it seems no matter what solution I find, I
manage to run into bugs or caveats which cause me to look for other
solutions... rinse lather repeat.

In the midst of the madness, I found that when doing either of the
following commands...

  ifconfig bridge0 addm em1
  ifconfig bridge0 deletem em1

...I see the entire em1 interface completely reset, bringing down link,
then up again shortly after.  The logs on my switch also confirm this.

For sake of comparison, the bge(4) driver does not behave this way.

I am aware that if_bridge(4) enables promiscuous mode on whatever
interface is being added, ditto with -promisc on deletem.  However, this
does not appear to be the cause of the problem, because I can do
"ifconfig em1 promisc" and "ifconfig em1 -promisc" without loss of link.

In the case of OpenVPN, it's fairly common for the iface-up/down scripts
to do a "ifconfig bridge0 addm/deletem" when the tunnel goes up and
down.  I'm sure one can see the implication from this...

Applicable details:

em1: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection Version - 6.2.9> port 0xa800-0xa83f mem 0xf2020000-0xf203ffff irq 23 at device 11.0 on pci2

em1@pci2:11:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x11138086 chip=0x10138086 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82541EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE #0: Tue Mar 27 09:19:46 PDT 2007     root@medusa.parodius.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MEDUSA

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |




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