Scyld problems

[Donald Becker]

On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Gabriel J. Weinstock wrote:

> We recently installed the new version of Scyld.  The program installed just 
> fine, and all four nodes are up. However, they insist on running at 10 Mbps 
> at half duplex, despite a fast Ethernet networking fabric. We are using the 
> 3Com OfficeConnect cards, and it's choosing the 3c59x driver.  Anyone know 
> what's going on here?

This should be moved to the vortex at scyld.com list.

The 3Com cards are generally excellent Fast Ethernet adapters.  The only
known problem is using the latest "CX" cards with earlier drivers that
don't work around the bogus MII management implementation on the new
chips.

The 3Com design includes the best hardware TCP/IP checksum support on
a commodity NIC.  The only weakness is the multicast filter
implementation, which is less important in a cluster environment.


The Scyld Beowulf system includes extensive diagnostic tools.
In this case you should use 'mii-diag' and 'vortex-diag' to see the
transceiver settings.

BTW, when you post the question on the Vortex list you should include
the version number.  Saying "new version" or "latest version" is not
useful.  As I frequently remind people posting on the support lists,
_I'm_ the only one running the latest version.

Donald Becker				becker at scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993