Just wanted to create a network bridge interface on an embedded Linux system. First try was with the well known brctl and I got this:

$ brctl addbr br0
add bridge failed: Package not installed

Searching the web for this, led me to an old blog post which comes to this conclusion:

So that’s the most silly way to say: you forgot to compile in bridge support into your kernel.

ip from busybox is a little more helpful on that:

$ /sbin/ip link add name br0 type bridge
ip: RTNETLINK answers: Operation not supported

And yes, the “real” ip from iproute2 is also as helpful as that:

$ /usr/sbin/ip link add name br0 type bridge
RTNETLINK answers: Operation not supported

And yes, somehow they are all right, it is actually my fault:

# CONFIG_BRIDGE is not set

I’m going to change my kernel config now …