Force Ethernet NIC to 10baseT

[Erik Dörnbach <doernbach@elge.de>]

Hello list,

at a site I have a debian sarge system with 3 NICs running as a firewall, 2x 3Com905 and 1x 3Com (dunno which exactly now) onboard. All three get recognized on bootup, share the 3c59x driver (found in the kernel I think) and can be configured without errors.

One of the 905s serves as a connection to a duplicate machine in another building, some 150m down the road connected via some whacky telephone cable using 2 twisted pairs. This connection has been used with Ethernet and 2 lame routers just before I put up the 2 debian servers, albeit possibly with 10baseT.

Now I don't get a link on the NICs on both ends, let alone any network communication.

What I think, I must force both NICs to 10baseT somehow, but I don't understand quite how to do that when I use 3 NICs in each machine sharing the same driver.

I tried playing with the media option in /etc/network/interfaces, but to no avail, always giving out errors (not supported parameter and the like, not in front of that machine atm) upon networking restart...

Ah yes, don't tell me to get a correct cable, I would do that also... but it worked before and it's not possible to dig up the whole street! :)


Any clues and ideas are really welcome. 

Regards,

Erik