topic Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced in Operating System - OpenVMS

Problem with Network when system board replaced

Nipun Patel — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:08:12 GMT

Hi,
Recently our system board for DS25 had to be replaced.

We were using EIA0 (Fast/Ethernet Card) for connection to the internet or TCP/IP. Now with the new board (we were unable to save the SRM console settings from the previous board) we cannot connect to the internet. Somehow it seems the eia0-mode settings do not seem to match or there is a problem with the port

We havee static IP and have the following options for the mode

Auto-Sensing
Twisted-Pair
Full Duplex, Twisted-Pair
AUI
BNC
Fast
FastFD (Full Duplex)
Auto-Negotiate

I have tried with
1) Auto Negotiate
2) Full Duplex, Twisted Pair

For 1) I get
***Error (eia 0.0.0.8.0) No link,Auto Negotiation did not complete The
selected mode is illegal or incompatible.

For 2) I do not get any other message but when I boot up sometimes the internet connection seems fine and other time it hangs. This suggests that the settings are in correct.

Would setting a different speed and testing for each mode one at a time be the best option ?

As far as the switch is concerned the network people informed me that they are set at 100/Full

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Ian Miller. — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 09:20:35 GMT

If the switch is fixed at 100/Full then set the card to FastFD

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Robert Brooks_1 — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:18:54 GMT

Unless there is a problem with the switch, any modern version of VMS should correctly autonegotiate the speed and duplex settings.

This comes directly from the VMS engineer who works on the ethernet drivers.

-- Rob

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Peter Zeiszler — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:04:32 GMT

Ian had it closest. Actually contact your network admin and have they force the port for your system to 100/full then force your card to 100/full.

If you have the equipment you can also have the network guys test your network speed and duplex at the cable where it plugs into your system.

Check your speed and duplex at the boot time and after it has booted. I like using "mc lancp show dev ewa0 /param".

We have ran into multiple instances where auto negotiate does not work and also where forcing the card to a specific speed without forcing the switch didn't get them working together.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Andy Bustamante — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:41:27 GMT

Peter is correct, the settings on the Alphaserver and the switch need to match. You can change the Alphaserver with the LANCP utility and avoid rebooting.

$ MCR LANCP
LANCP> SET DEVICE EIA0/SPEED=100/FULL_DUPLEX

To make the changes permanent, replace SET with DEFINE.

You can use SHOW DEVICE/COUNTERS in LANCP to check for errors, this can be a sign of a duplex mismatch.

Andy

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Steven Schweda — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:23:03 GMT

My experience is limited to stupid switches,
but I've never had a problem with
Auto-Negotiate.

Are you sure that nothing bad happened to the
E-net card or the cable (or the switch) when
the work was done to the system?

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Eric Dittman — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:27:42 GMT

If you hard-code the settings on one end of the connection you need to hard-code the settings on the other end. Autonegotiation doesn't work right if you have one end hard-coded and the other set to autonegotiate.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

nipun_2 — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:31:22 GMT

Ian, Peter and Andy
you guys are geniuses....

Doing so worked perfectly. Also the idea mentioned by Peter to do it in the terminal is very helpful. I was always shutting down the node.

So now I have got 2/3 nodes to work...and got all the switches set to 100 /FullFD

One node is not working so I got the following mail from my network admin
00-02-a5-20-07-5b - shows connected but is not visible on the router and is not pingable... It occasionally shows as an incomplete arp... Check it has gateway xx.xx.xxx.x and subnet mask yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy...

So I guess I can do this from lancp or tcpip?
I will try to figure out how to check those settings and if required modify them..so that the last node works. I believe this would be now be openvms issue and not the hardware issue as all of them are on FastFD

Nipun

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Volker Halle — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:46:09 GMT

Nipun,

the first check would be $ TCPIP SHOW INT
Make sure, there is a valid interface defined with the expected address and network mask. The packets received and send counters should be non-zero.

Next you could check the LAN device counters with LANCP> SHOW DEV/COUNT EIA0 - note that you can also look at the LAN driver console messages with LANCP> SHOW DEV/INT EIA0 (will display internal counters and the console messages at the bottom).

Volker.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

nipun_2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:54:00 GMT

Hi Volker,
I executed the commands you mentioned and it seems to indicate that I don't have EIA0 configured as I do not even get that name as can be seen in the log below (Also attached as Text File)

Note: I have two ethernet cards WE0 is already congfigured for cluster. I need to use the EIA0 for connecting to the internet.

So I believe I need to figure out the correct options with

$@tcpip$config

========Log of the current network settings ============ (Also attached as Text File)

$ tcpip show int
Packets
Interface IP_Addr Network mask Receive Send MTU

LO0 127.0.0.1 255.0.0.0 319 319 4096
WE0 10.35.221.122 255.255.255.128 2543 2563 1500

LANCP> show dev /count EIA0

Device Counters EIA0:
Value Counter
----- -------
254989 Seconds since last zeroed
20116718763 Bytes received
9590441257 Bytes sent
62529329 Packets received
36359847 Packets sent
31946897 Multicast bytes received
16878723 Multicast bytes sent
228300 Multicast packets received
141932 Multicast packets sent
0 Unrecognized unicast destination packets
6587 Unrecognized multicast destination packets
0 Unavailable station buffers
0 Unavailable user buffers
0 Alignment errors
0 Frame check errors
0 Frame size errors
0 Frame status errors
0 Frame length errors
0 Frame too long errors
0 Data overruns
0 Send data length errors
0 Receive data length errors
0 Transmit underrun errors
0 Transmit failures
0 Carrier check failures
0 Station failures
0 Initially deferred packets sent
0 Single collision packets sent
0 Multiple collision packets sent
0 Excessive collisions
0 Late collisions
0 Collision detect check failures
LANCP>

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

nipun_2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:54:56 GMT

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Volker Halle — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:03:51 GMT

Nipun,

you do not have EIA0 configured in TCPIP. Otherwise it would show up as an 'ie0' device.

You need to figure out which IP address and network mask to use and run @TCPIP$CONFIG -> Core environment -> interfaces.

Why would swapping the system board make the TCPIP interface configuration for EIA0 disappear ???

Volker.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Steven Schweda — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:42:21 GMT

> WE0 is already congfigured for cluster.

What does this mean? A VMScluster does not
use TCP/IP.

According to your LANCP output, _someone_ is
using EIA0. DECnet? What?

> $@tcpip$config

Start with "Core environment" - "Interfaces",
but it might pay to go through the whole
thing, and see what's what.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Volker Halle — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:46:13 GMT

WE0 may be used for cluster communication.

$ ANAL/SYS
SDA> SHOW LAN
SDA> EXIT

is the best tool to find out, which protocols are active on which network device.

Volker.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Robert Brooks_1 — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:19:57 GMT

$ ANAL/SYS
SDA> SHOW LAN
SDA> EXIT

is the best tool to find out, which protocols are active on which network device.

----

On V8.3, SHOW DEVICE /FULL for LAN devices displays the protocol in use on each device.

For example . . .

Device EWA2:, device type DE500, is online, network device, error logging is
enabled.

Error count 0 Operations completed 58472
Owner process "NETACP" Owner UIC [SYSTEM]
Owner process ID 0000041B Dev Prot S:RWPL,O:RWPL,G,W
Reference count 2 Default buffer size 1498

Operating characteristics: Full duplex, Autonegotiation.

Speed (Mbits/sec) 100
Def. MAC addr 08-00-2B-86-AD-95 Current MAC addr AA-00-04-00-88-39
Protocol name DECNET Protocol type 60-03

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

nipun_2 — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:15:31 GMT

Hi,
I choose the following when I executed the command

$tcpip$config

INTERFACE Configuration

The Ethernet device(s) on your system are: EWA0:
EIA0: * Not Configured *

Start of configuration questions for Internet interface WE0 instead of EIA0 which we want.

Note: Vol, you are right this has nothing to do with the hardware error and it's replacement. This (EIA0) just hasn't been configured.

Nipun

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Steven Schweda — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:32:54 GMT

> Start of configuration questions for
> Internet interface WE0 instead of EIA0
> which we want.

Just agree with the current configuration of
the interface(s) which you like, and you
should eventually get to the one(s) which
you wish to change.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Volker Halle — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:38:59 GMT

Nipun,

EWA0 (we0) currently is the only LAN device configured for TCPIP on your system. If you want to configure EIA0 (ie0) as well, just don't change the EWA0 config and continue on to the next device, which will be EIA0. You need to know the correct IP address, name and network mask to configure that interface.

You need to restart TCPIP to activate the new configuration. You could also do this manually, a reboot - if possible - is the cleanest solution.

Volker.

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

nipun_2 — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:14:37 GMT

Hi all,
Thanks for the response. Configuring EIA0 without touching EWA0 is exactly what I wish to do

However,
When I execute $@tcpip$config

I am providing the options I choose after choose
1) Core Environment -> Interface

=======log output==============

INTERFACE Configuration

The Ethernet device(s) on your system are: EWA0:
EIA0: * Not
Configured *

Start of configuration questions for Internet interface WE0.

WE0 is the Ethernet device EWA0:

Interface: WE0
IP_Addr: 10.35.221.122 NETWRK: 255.255.255.128 BRDCST:
10.35.221.127
C_Addr: C_NETWRK: C_BRDCST:

Flags:
Receive buffer: 0

HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Interface WE0 Reconfiguration
Menu

Reconfiguration options:

1 - Configure interface manually (Current
default)
2 - Let DHCP configure interface

[E] - Exit menu (Do not reconfigure interface WE0)

Enter configuration option: 1

So here I have only option 1 and 2 in which case it always goes to WE0 so how do go to EIA0?

Re: Problem with Network when system board replaced

Volker Halle — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:17:28 GMT

Nipun,

you should enter 'E' for Exit menu (Do not reconfigure interface WE0).

Then you will be taken to the configuration questions for the next device.

Volker.