topic Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit in Operating System - Linux

Setting NIC to Gigabit

Jorge Fabregas — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:42:15 GMT

Hello guys,

I'm running "RHEL 4" on a ProLiant BL20p G3 server. The NIC is "HP NC-Series Broadcom Gigabit" and I installed the Proliant Support Pack a while ago (so I'm using the correct drivers). My modprobe.conf shows that tg3 is the driver being used.

My probelm is that I'm unable to set the card speed to gigabit. The switch is configured for 1000 (100% sure). When I do this:

ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 1000 duplex full

I get:

Cannot set new settings: Invalid argument
not setting speed
not setting duplex
not setting autoneg

I read in some past thread that whenever you activate gigabit you should turn on autoneg...I tried that..the ethtool command succedds..but hwen I restart the interface and do:

ethtool eth0

it won't show the NIC as using 1000.

Is there some option I need to configure in modprobe.conf for the tg3 driver?

I even appended this:

ETHTOOL_OPTS="speed 1000 duplex full autoneg off"

to the /etc/syscongig/network-scripts/ifcg-eth0
but it just doesn't work.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Jorge

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

Ivan Ferreira — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:26:45 GMT

GB Ethernet have to use autonegotiation, and "auto" should be set at the switch port also, that is, both, the switch and the eth must be set to autoneg.

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

Steven E. Protter — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:29:18 GMT

Shalom Jorge,

Most likely problem is the connection is routed through a 100 BaseT hub or the switch port or some other part of the network infrastructure you are plugged into is not 1000 BaseT

If the network hardware is right then auto negotiate should get you to GB speeds.

SEP

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

Jorge Fabregas — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:13:44 GMT

Hello Ivan & Steven,

The server is directly connected to this switch which supports 1000BASE-T.

Steven: I just told the network guy to change the switch port to AUTO and I changed my line to this in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcg-eth0:

ETHTOOL_OPTS="speed 1000 duplex full autoneg on"

then I do: service network restart

and ethtool eth0 shows:

ettings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x000000ff (255)
Link detected: yes

:(

I'm wondering if the tg3 driver is the actual driver that gets installed with PSP or is it the generic one provided by RHEL?

Thanks!
Jorge

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

Ivan Ferreira — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:07:17 GMT

Try with modinfo tg3 to identify the vendor. What is your configuration in /etc/modprobe.conf? Remove the ETHTOOL_OPTS from your ifcfg-eth0 file and try again. Stop network services, unload the tg3 module, try again, or just reboot the server.

Module parameters may not be changed if the module is not unloaded.

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

Jorge Fabregas — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:13:49 GMT

Thanks Ivan. Your suggestion of rebooting the server did work! I can't believe it...since this is not Windows :) but it did work! I confirmed the ports in switch were set to AUTO and I just removed the ETHTOOL_OPTS I had in ifcfg-eth0 and now I get 1000base-T after restart!

Probably I just needed to unload/load the driver module....

Thanks!
Jorge

Re: Setting NIC to Gigabit

dirk dierickx — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:00:23 GMT

btw: we don't install the psp and the network card just work as it should.