Ehhhh, I'm still having problems with ifconfig of virtual interfaces. I tried "ifconfig eta partner eta" and it took, although I don't know what that means semantically.
This means: in takeover mode, have the local "eta" interface takeover for the partner "eta" interface.
Then I came up with another enlightened idea "ifconfig eta -partner 10.10.10.11" that does not do what "ifconfig eta partner 10.10.10.11" did in the past (Oh, BTW, thanks NetApp for changing the syntax of the command between revs).
"partner" and "-partner" mean different things. "partner" specifies the takeover interface mapping; the argument after the "partner" keyword specifies the interface that should be taken over. "-partner" clears such a mapping, and takes no argument. These keywords were introduced in 5.2; we haven't changed the meaning of them since.
"ifconfig" consumes its arguments one at a time, processing a keyword (and arguments, if applicable) and progressing on to the next keyword. Thus, when you specified "ifconfig eta -partner 10.10.10.11", "ifconfig" parsed it as follows:
ifconfig eta -partner # clear the eta partner mapping ifconfig eta 10.10.10.11 # set eta's address
Granted, this is somewhat counter-intuitive.
I should add that I tried "ifconfig eta partner 10.10.10.11" before only to receive this error: ifconfig: 10.10.10.11: bad vif partner address
This is a very poor error message which will be fixed in an upcoming release. Partner mapping for vifs and ATM must be specified by interface name only; partner mapping for other interfaces can be specified by IP address or interface name. The error message is trying to tell you, in a round-about way, that you've specified a IP address, not an interface name.
Thanks for your feedback; please don't hesitate to bring other such issues to our attention.
Sam