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Oracle® Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide
11g Release 1 (11.1)

Part Number B28255-01
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C Oracle Interface Configuration (OIFCFG) Command Reference

The Oracle Interface Configuration (OIFCFG) command-line interface helps you to define and administer network interfaces. You can issue OIFCFG commands in single-instance and Oracle Clusterware environments to:

This appendix contains the following main topics:

Starting the OIFCFG Command-Line Interface

Before you invoke OIFCFG, ensure that you have started Oracle Clusterware on at least the local node and preferably on all nodes if you intend to include the -global option on the command.

You invoke OIFCFG from the CRS_home/bin/ directory as the CRS user who installed the Oracle Clusterware software.

For example:

% ./oifcfg

Issue the oifcfg -help command to display online help for OIFCFG.

oifcfg iflist
  oifcfg setif {-node <nodename> | -global} {<if_name>/<subnet>:<if_type>}...
  oifcfg getif [-node <nodename> | -global] [ -if <if_name>[/<subnet>] [-type <if_type>]]
  oifcfg delif [-node <nodename> | -global] [<if_name>[/<subnet>]]
  oifcfg [-help]
 
 <nodename> - name of the host, as known to a communications network
 <if_name>  - name by which the interface is configured in the system
 <subnet>   - subnet address of the interface
 <if_type>  - type of the interface {cluster_interconnect|public|storage}

Summary of the OIFCFG Usage

This section contains the following topics:

OIFCFG Command Format

oifcfg iflist
oifcfg setif {-node nodename | -global} {if_name/subnet:if_type} ...
oifcfg getif [-node nodename | -global] [-if if_name [/subnet] [-type if_type]]
oifcfg delif [-node nodename | -global] [if_name [/subnet]]
oifcfg [-help]

OIFCFG Commands

You can enter any of the OIFCFG commands listed in Table C-1.

Table C-1 OIFCFG Commands

Command Description

oifcfg iflist

Shows the available interfaces that you can configure with setif. The iflist command queries the operating system to find which network interfaces are present on this node.

oifcfg setif

Sets an interface type (public or cluster interconnect) for an interface.

oifcfg getif

Displays the interfaces for which an interface type has been defined with the setif command, along with the type for that interface.

oifcfg delif

Deletes the stored network configuration for global or node-specific interfaces.


OIFCFG Command Parameters

This section lists the parameters for the OIFCFG commands. Note that some of the parameters are optional, depending on which command you issue.

-node <nodename>

The name of the Oracle Clusterware node as listed in the output from the olsnodes command. The OLSNODES command is described in Appendix B, "OLSNODES Command Reference".

-global

A network interface can be stored as a global interface (as reported by the iflist command) or as a node-specific interface:

  • An interface is stored as a global interface when all of the nodes of an Oracle RAC cluster have the same interface connected to the same subnet. The global interface (and configuring all nodes with the same network interface for each public subnet and the same network interface for each private subnet) is not only the recommended configuration, but it is also the default installation configuration.

  • An interface can be stored as a node-specific (local) interface.

    Note:

    Oracle currently does not support having different network interfaces for each node in the cluster. The best practice is to configure all nodes with the same network interface for each public subnet and the same network interface for each private subnet. See "Changing Network Addresses" for information about changing interface names.
-if <if_name>

The name by which the interface is configured in the system.

subnet

The subnet number of the interface.

-type <if_type>

The type of interface: public or cluster interconnect.

-help

Display online help for OIFCFG commands.

OIFCFG Usage Notes

  • A network interface specification takes the following form:

    interface_name/subnet:interface_type
    

    The specification uniquely identifies the network interface using the:

    • Interface name

    • Associated subnet

    • Interface type

      The interface type indicates the purpose for which the network is configured. The supported interface types are:

      • Public—An interface that can be used for communication with components external to Oracle RAC instances, such as Oracle Net and Virtual Internet Protocol (VIP) addresses.

      • Cluster_interconnect—A private interface used for the cluster interconnect to provide interinstance or Cache FusionFoot 1  communication.

      If you set the interface type to cluster_interconnect, it affects instances as they start up and changes do not take effect until you restart the instances.

    For example, the following specification identifies qfe0 as a cluster interconnect located at the address 204.152.65.0:

    qfe0/204.152.65.0:cluster_interconnect
    
  • The Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) uses OIFCFG to identify and display available interfaces.

  • The effect of changing the interface names depends on which name you are changing, and whether or not you are also changing the IP address. In cases where you change only the interface names, the ramifications are minor. If you change the name for the public interface that is stored in the OCR, you must modify the nodeapps for each node. Therefore, you must stop the nodeapps for this change to take effect.

  • You must restart Oracle Clusterware on all members of the cluster when you make global changes. For local changes, you only need to perform a node restart. Interconnect changes for the database occur at instance startup. However, the interconnect for Oracle Clusterware might be different.

  • Because interconnects are chosen when instances start, just issuing OIFCFG commands does not have an immediate effect on the running system. Instead, changes take effect after restarting the component that might be affected by the command.

OIFCFG Examples

The following examples show some common uses for the OIFCFG commands.


Example 1   Listing the Names of Network Interfaces

You can use OIFCFG to list the interface names and the subnets of all of the interfaces available on the local node by executing the iflist keyword, as shown in this example:

oifcfg iflist
hme0     139.185.141.0
qfe0     204.152.65.0

Example 2   Retrieving Network Information

You can also retrieve specific OIFCFG information with a getif command.

oifcfg getif [ [-global | -node nodename] [-if if_name[/subnet]] [-type if_type] ]

For example, after you install Oracle Clusterware, you can verify that the public and cluster interconnect have been set to the desired values by entering the following commands as root:

$ oifcfg getif

This command should return values for global public and global cluster_interconnect. For example:

en0 144.25.68.0 global public
hme0 139.185.141.0 global cluster_interconnect

Example 3   Storing a New Global Interface

To store a new interface, use the setif keyword. For example, to store the interface hme0, with the subnet 139.185.141.0, as a global interface (to be used as an interconnect for all of the Oracle RAC instances in your cluster), you would use the command:

oifcfg setif -global hme0/139.185.141.0:cluster_interconnect

For a cluster interconnect that exists between only two nodes, for example rac1 and rac2, you could create the cms0 interface with the following commands, assuming 139.185.142.0 is the subnet number for the interconnect on rac1 and rac2, respectively:

oifcfg setif -global cms0/139.185.142.0:cluster_interconnect

Example 4   Deleting the Stored Interface

Use the OIFCFG delif command to delete the stored configuration for global or node-specific interfaces. A specific node-specific or global interface can be deleted by supplying the interface name, with an optional subnet, on the command line. Without the -node or -global options, the delif keyword deletes either the given interface or all of the global and node-specific interfaces on all of the nodes in the cluster.

For example, the following command deletes the global interface named qfe0 for the subnet 204.152.65.0:

oifcfg delif -global qfe0/204.152.65.0

The following command deletes all of the global interfaces assigned with OIFCFG:

oifcfg delif -global


Footnote Legend

Footnote 1: Cache Fusion is a diskless cache coherency mechanism that provides copies of blocks directly from a holding instance's memory cache to a requesting instance's memory cache.