Re: New Server

["David A. Parker" <dparker@utica.edu>]

Ed Curtis wrote:
> I'm getting ready to build a new server. Has anyone on the list had any 
> problems or used Silicon Mechanics before. I'm checking out some quotes 
> from there. They use Nvida MCP55 Pro dual nics in their system. I 
> thought I had heard about problems with Nvida nics in the past on the 
> list but Google hasn't given me any bad new about them.
>
> TIA for any info,
>
> Ed

Hi,

I recently built a box with an onboard Nvidia NIC, and it didn't work 
under Etch.  I spent several days Googling and troubleshooting it until 
I finally gave up and installed a PCI NIC I knew would work.  The 
problem seemed to boil down to the fact that the forcedeth driver was 
not able to query to NIC properly to get its MAC address, so it would 
just assign a random MAC address to it instead.  Because of this, the 
NIC got a different device designation (eth0, eth1, etc.) each time the 
computer booted, and it wasn't possible to use udev to fix it since the 
MAC address was always different.

One of my Google searches brought up a post that said this was fixed in 
the forcedeth driver in testing, but I didn't try it.

    - Dave

--

Dave Parker
Utica College Department of
Integrated Information Technology Services
Data Processing Office
(315) 792-3229
Registered Linux User #408177