System Administration Guide: Network Interfaces and Network Virtualization

ProcedureHow to Configure the Behavior of the IPMP Daemon

Use the IPMP configuration file /etc/default/mpathd to configure the following system-wide parameters for IPMP groups.

  1. On the system with the IPMP group configuration, assume the Primary Administrator role or become superuser.

    The Primary Administrator role includes the Primary Administrator profile. To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Chapter 2, Working With the Solaris Management Console (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

  2. Edit the /etc/default/mpathd file.

    Change the default value of one or more of the three parameters.

    1. Type the new value for the FAILURE_DETECTION_TIME parameter.


      FAILURE_DETECTION_TIME=n
      

      where n is the amount of time in seconds for ICMP probes to detect whether an interface failure has occurred. The default is 10 seconds.

    2. Type the new value for the FAILBACK parameter.


      FAILBACK=[yes | no]
      • yes– The yes value is the default for the failback behavior of IPMP. When the repair of a failed interface is detected, network access fails back to the repaired interface, as described in Detecting Physical Interface Repairs.

      • no – The no value indicates that data traffic does not move back to a repaired interface. When a failed interfaces is detected as repaired, the INACTIVE flag is set for that interface. This flag indicates that the interface is currently not to be used for data traffic. The interface can still be used for probe traffic.

        For example, the IPMP group ipmp0 consists of two interfaces, ce0 and ce1. In the /etc/default/mpathd file, the FAILBACK=no parameter is set. If ce0 fails, then it is flagged as FAILED and becomes unusable. After repair, the interface is flagged as INACTIVE and remains unusable because of the FAILBACK=no setting.

        If ce1 fails and only ce0 is in the INACTIVE state, then ce0's INACTIVE flag is cleared and the interface becomes usable. If the IPMP group has other interfaces that are also in the INACTIVE state, then any one of these INACTIVE interfaces, and not necessarily ce0, can be cleared and become usable when ce1 fails.

    3. Type the new value for the TRACK_INTERFACES_ONLY_WITH_GROUPS parameter.


      TRACK_INTERFACES_ONLY_WITH_GROUPS=[yes | no]

      Note –

      For information about this parameter and the anonymous group feature, see Failure Detection and the Anonymous Group Feature.


      • yes– The yes value is the default for the behavior of IPMP. This parameter causes IPMP to ignore network interfaces that are not configured into an IPMP group.

      • no – The no value sets failure and repair detection for all network interfaces, regardless of whether they are configured into an IPMP group. However, when a failure or repair is detected on an interface that is not configured into an IPMP group, no action is triggered in IPMP to maintain the networking functions of that interface. Therefore, theno value is only useful for reporting failures and does not directly improve network availability.

  3. Restart the in.mpathd daemon.


    # pkill -HUP in.mpathd