Trying to ping from a subinterface.

CLOSE Dave Dave.Close at us.thalesgroup.com
Mon Jun 2 18:18:45 UTC 2014


On Fedora 20 x86_64.

According to "man ping", ping should work from a subinterface specifying 
either the interface name or its address:

> -I interface
>    interface is either an address, or an interface name.  If inter‐
>    face is an address, it sets source address to  specified  inter‐
>    face address.  If interface in an interface name, it sets source
>    interface to specified interface.

I've got a subinterface and I'm trying to ping from it.

> # ifconfig eth3:sub1
> eth3:sub1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
>        inet 172.17.30.143  netmask 255.255.254.0  broadcast 172.17.31.255
>        ether 90:e2:ba:34:46:41  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
>        device memory 0xdc7e0000-dc800000

If I ping from the address, it works as specified. If I specify the 
interface name instead, I see:

> # ping -I eth3:sub1 172.17.30.1
> ping: SO_BINDTODEVICE: Invalid argument

Investigating a little deeper:

> # strace ping -I eth3:sub1 172.17.30.1
> execve("/usr/bin/ping", ["ping", "-I", "eth3:sub1", "172.17.30.1"], [/* 38 vars */]) = 0
> ...
> setsockopt(4, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BINDTODEVICE, "eth3:sub1\0", 13) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
> ...
> +++ exited with 2 +++

Any thoughts?
-- 
Dave Close


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