Comment 3 for bug 889423

I'm also seeing this and have carried out some tests.

The following interfaces config works across Lucid, Maverick & Natty but fails on Oneiric:
==
auto bond0
iface bond0 inet static
        bond-slaves none
        bond-mode 802.3ad
        bond-miimon 100
       address 10.153.107.22
       netmask 255.255.255.0
       gateway 10.153.107.1

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
        bond-master bond0
        bond-primary eth0 eth1

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet manual
        bond-master bond0
        bond-primary eth0 eth1
==

That config is based on the example from the ifenslave docs (/usr/share/doc/ifenslave-2.6/examples/two_hotplug_ethernet), with the mode swapped out.

During those tests I also tried out bonding mode 1 (active-standby), this works fine in every release tested including Oneiric.

I can confirm the Alberts' findings that bringing up the bond manually works around the problem in ifupdown/ifenslave.