[eepro100] can't negotiate the switch

[John Howay]

Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com> on 12/19/2001 01:01:36 PM

To:   John Howay/NRC/NationalAcademies@NAS
cc:   eepro100@scyld.com

Subject:  Re: [eepro100] can't negotiate the switch



I'm going to take our network manager to task for disabling
autonegotiation--it's policy here and it has caused me a ton of headaches. What
you have written on the evils of forced media is not lost on me, Donald. I
appreciate your help--I'll post the info you requested tomorrow (holiday party
going on now--after getting the network manager drunk, I'm going to break all of
his full-duplexed switches).


On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, John Howay wrote:

> Hello. I'm running RH 7.1 (seawolf) on an IBM x340 server that has an
integrated
> PCnet adapter and an EEPRO100 PCI adapter.
...
> The server is connected to a Cisco
> Catalyst 3500 XL switch set to 100 full-duplex--no autonegotiation

Grrr, more people that have been brainwashed into thinking that
forced-full-duplex is acceptable.

Note that Cisco switches often take several minutes after seeing link
beat before they will communicate.

> Ping ALWAYS returns: Destination Host Unreachable (except for
> lo and eth0/eth1, of course).

After a timeout, or immediately?  If immediately, check your routing table.

> I first left the interface(s) set to autonegotiate, then I forced (on
> the fly) 100-FD with mii-diag. I tried this with both adapters. I have
> not successfully booted to 100-FD. Could this be my problem?

What driver version version?
What did mii-diag report?

Note that mismatched duplex connection will still work, it will just
have low performance.  If the link isn't working with ping, it's not due
to a duplex mismatch.

What are the statistics and error counts from 'ifconfig' or 'cat
/proc/net/dev'?


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