To activate a bond, bring up all the slaves. As root, issue the following commands:

~]#  /usr/sbin/ifup ifcfg-eth0
Connection successfully activated (D-Bus active path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/7)

~]#  /usr/sbin/ifup ifcfg-eth1
Connection successfully activated (D-Bus active path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/8)

Note that if editing interface files for interfaces which are currently “up”, set them down first as follows:

/usr/sbin/ifdown ifcfg-ethN

Then when complete, bring up all the slaves, which will bring up the bond (provided it was not set “down”).

To make NetworkManager aware of the changes, issue a command for every changed interface as root:

~]# nmcli con load /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-device

Alternatively, to reload all interfaces:

~]# nmcli con reload

The default behavior is for NetworkManager not to be aware of the changes and to continue using the old configuration data. The is set by the monitor-connection-files option in the NetworkManager.conf file. See the NetworkManager.conf(5) manual page for more information.

To view the status of the bond interface, issue the following command:

~]# ip link show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast master bond0 state UP mode DEFAULT qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:e9:ce:d2 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast master bond0 state UP mode DEFAULT qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:38:a6:4c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: bond0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,MASTER,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP mode DEFAULT
    link/ether 52:54:00:38:a6:4c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff