Re: RE: SunFire v240

I’m trying to get at the Debian repos in the hope that a different kernel version will fix this problem. After failing to get any form of networking happening with the onboard Broadcom 4-way interface, I’ve installed a Sun ‘Happy Meal’ 4-way NIC, and have noticed a very bizarre anomaly.

After plugging an Ethernet cable into the 1^st interface on the Happy Meal (alias eth4) and booting into rescue mode from the Debian Testing netinst CD, and broadcasting for a DHCP IP address, I see the below in tcpdump:

07:27:25.605818 IP 0.0.0.0.bootpc > 255.255.255.255.bootps: BOOTP/DHCP, Request from 00:03:ba:6c:e5:36 (oui Unknown), length: 300

Yet the interface MAC addresses are as follows:

~ # ifconfig | grep 'eth'

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:74:23:C9

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:74:23:CA

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:74:23:C7

eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:74:23:C8

eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:6C:F5:36

eth5 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:6C:F5:37

eth6 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:6C:F5:38

eth7 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:BA:6C:F5:39

Note that in the 2^nd to last octet, the ifconfig utility reports ‘F5’, where tcpdump is seeing ‘E5’.

With a statically-configured IP address, and booted into rescue mode (kernel 2.6.15-1-sparc64) using ping, ARPs originating on the V240 can be seen also using an incorrect MAC address:

08:00:22.179511 00:03:ba:6c:e5:36 (oui Unknown) > ff:ff:ef:ff:ff:ff (oui Unknown), ethertype ARP (0x0806), length 60: arp who-has 10.10.0.1 tell 10.10.0.2

Repeating the exercise with the onboard Broadcom interface, no DHCP request is even seen by TCPDUMP so I can only assume that the Broadcom is either not properly supported or is actually as bad as everyone says.