RE: Dell PowerEdge R300 with BMC5722 NIC (tg3 driver)
Greetings Keith,
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Edmunds [mailto:kae@midnighthax.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 5:08 AM
> To: debian-isp@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Dell PowerEdge R300 with BMC5722 NIC (tg3
> driver)
>
> We're setting up a number of these servers and we're
> having problems with
> the NIC locking up. It retains its IP address, but the
> 'dropped' count
> keeps increasing and no network traffic flows over the
> connection.
> ifdown/ifup on the interface fixes the problem.
>
> We've tried downloading, compiling and using the tg3
> driver from the
> Broadcom website, but that's made no difference.
>
> I've found a couple of other references to problems
> similar to this, most
> notably http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-
> netdev/2009/6/9/5902123
> (although that user is running RHEL rather than Debian,
> so it does look
> like a kernel issue).
>
> Anyone else seen this and, more importantly, found a
> way around it?
[snip]
Are you using a Dell switch as an uplink? With many of the
Dell switches I placed in service I found issues where the
link dropped from full duplex to half. To resolve this I
manually set the port speed and duplex; however links then
began to flap and then decommissioning that particular
switchgear as the only other method to resolve was giving
the switch a hard kick when issues only affected a small
number of ports -- OS independent.
What type of link - 10/100 or 10/100/1000? If the link is
10/100 I've had success manually brining the connection to
100/Full Duplex with mii-tool (check capabilities with
'mii-tool -v' can set using eth0 as your interface 'mii-tool
-F 100baseTx-FD eth0'). With a gig link however I have
found more stability with ethtool (using eth0 again:
'ethtool -s eth0 speed 1000 duplex full autoneg off'). The
switch ports might have to be changed from autosense to
specified speed/duplex also depending on your environment.
Can you post information from the switch port -- interface
status; and information from the server - 'ethtool eth0 &&
ethtool -S eth0' // 'mii-tool -v'
Bests,
Christopher Davis
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