NIC bonding on pSeries with dual VIOS

[Frank Fegert <fra.nospam.nk@gmx.de>]

Hello all,

i've got Debian (testing) running on a DLPAR on a pSeries 9117-570.
The system gets several NICs from two VIO servers, which in turn are
connected to different switches for redundancy. Two NICs within each
subnet are paired via bonding devices.
Now the problem:
 - If i choose 'balance-rr' as bonding mode our network guys complain,
   because the same MAC appears on two different switchports that be-
   long to the same VLAN. (Because the bonding interfaces MAC gets
   forced onto each slave eth-interface.)
 - 'balance-alb' would be an alternative, since it uses the MAC of
   the slave eth-interfaces instead of the one from the bonding inter-
   face. Unfortunately 'balance-alb' does not seem to be supported
   with the ibmveth driver.
 - 'active-backup' would also be an alternative, but then i can't
   reach other LPARs on the same machine which currently have their
   active interface on another VIO. LPARs with their active interface
   on the same VIO can be reached. This is strange, because the other
   LPARs (all AIX) use NIB (also active-backup NIC bonding) and can
   all reach eachother no matter on which VIO their active interface
   is.

Is the 'active-backup' problem a limitation of the ibmveth driver, or
am i missing something here?

Thanks & regards,

        Frank