Mountain Lion, VLAN (.1q) Config Not Sticking After Reboot?

Question

Greetings folks -
I'm experimenting with 10.8.2 on my Mac Pro along with a managed Ethernet switch.  Said switch supports .1q VLANing, as does ML.  When I follow the appropriate steps to configure VLANs on the Mac:
Sys Prefs -> Network -> Manage Virtual Interfaces
and set the switch port to trunk those same VLANs, everything works fine.  Until I reboot the Mac.  Once I do that, nothing from a networking perspective is intialized or configured at all.  The hostname is the default "localhost", none of the VLANs are configured, and no IP addresses are set.  Further, the Network Sys Pref pane won't open.  It does nothing but beach balls, and I have to "Force Kill" Sys Prefs.  The only way I can return the machine to booting properly is to use the networksetup command on the CLI to remove the VLAN configuration.  Once I do that and reboot the Mac, it comes up fine.
I did some digging into the system.log to see if I could find a difference in the boot messages when VLANs are configured and when they aren't.  When the machine boots normally without VLANs configured, this line appears in the system.log:
Jan  1 11:13:35 localhost kernel[0]: com.parallels.kext.prlnet 7.0.15107.796624 has started.
Jan  1 11:13:35 localhost kernel[0]: com.parallels.kext.vnic 7.0.15107.796624 has started.
Jan  1 11:13:35 localhost kernel[0]: com_parallels_kext_prl_vnic: created vnic0
Jan  1 11:13:35 localhost kernel[0]: com_parallels_kext_prl_vnic: created vnic1
Jan  1 11:13:35 mrfreeze.local configd[18]: setting hostname to "mrfreeze.local"
Jan  1 11:13:35 mrfreeze.local Parallels[225]: Parallels networking sucessfully started
(yes, I have Parallels installed)
However, when I boot with VLANs configured, that configd line never appears in the log file:
Jan  1 11:10:46 localhost kernel[0]: com.parallels.kext.prlnet 7.0.15107.796624 has started.
Jan  1 11:10:46 localhost kernel[0]: com.parallels.kext.vnic 7.0.15107.796624 has started.
Jan  1 11:10:46 localhost kernel[0]: com_parallels_kext_prl_vnic: created vnic0
Jan  1 11:10:46 localhost kernel[0]: com_parallels_kext_prl_vnic: created vnic1
Jan  1 11:10:46 localhost Parallels[225]: Parallels networking sucessfully started
I tried knocking configd into verbose mode with the -v flag in its .plist file, but that didn't result in any extra logging.  I'm not sure where else to look or what else to try.  It appears to be a bug of some sort in the order in which things are started, but I'm not 100% positive of that.
Any ideas?  Any other info I can provide?
Thanks.
jas

Answer 1

David -
Dobyrne123 wrote:
hello Jason, I am having the same issue using VLAN set up through a managed ethernet switch. Please could you tell me how to combine the 802.3ad Ethernet and VLAN. I have no expertise in network set-up so the simpler the better :-)
I don't know what kind of managed switch you have, but the steps are pretty simple.  On the switch, you need to figure out how to create a LAG or Ethernet bundle of 2 Ethernet ports, with LACP enabled.  Cable those two Ethernet ports up to the back of your Mac Pro or other Mac with 2 Ethernet ports.
Also on the switch, you need to assign a VLAN, or several VLANs to that new LAG.  Again, you'll need to figure out how to do that on your switch.
On the Mac in the Network System Preferences pane, choose the little gear at the bottom of the list of interfaces, and then Manage Virtual Interfaces.  Choose the + and add a New Link Aggregate.  Put both Ethernet interfaces into that LAG.
Choose the + again, and add a New VLAN.  Pick Bond0 as the interface from the drop down, then name the VLAN (anything you want) and assign it the proper VLAN ID #.  That # has to match whatever you set on the switch.
That should do it.  Save everything and wait a sec or two while the underlying BSD OS gets its wits about it and starts sending and accepting .1q packets.
jas