%EWA0 possible duplex mode mismatch condition detected

[Tim Schofield_1]

Thanks everyone for your help. Great forum. I will let you know how I make out.
BTW my second site with this issue had changed their switch to half duplex which caused the errors at that site.
Tim

[Ian Miller.]

If in doubt blame the network - the network folks won't admit anything but the problem will mysteriously get fixed. :-)

I see this is your first question. Welcome to the forum. See
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

[John Gillings]

Tim,
Try this:

$ MCR LANCP SHOW DEVICE EWA0/INTERNAL

You will need PHY_IO privilege.

At the bottom you'll see "Driver Messages" which will give the state of the adapter. You may see something like:

12-FEB-2007 11:57:08.64 Auto-negotiation mode set by console (EWA0_MODE)

or

12-FEB-2007 11:57:08.72 FastFD mode set by console

If it's auto-negotiation, the messages should also say what was negotiated and when.

The rule is very simple. Both ends of the wire must be set the same.

Personally I recommend AUTO everywhere, as that's the default for most switches.

[rick jones]

Some boilerplate on how autoneg is supposed to work and some indications when there is a duplex mismatch.

[Colin Butcher]

In general the later NICs do autonegotiate of speed and duplex successfuly. LANCP is the tool you want to show the NIC states.

In general for EW 10/100 devices I prefer to set the speed and duplex at the console (eg: set ewa0_mode fastfd) and set the speed and duplex identically at the switch end as well.

For EW Gigabit devices (Broadcomm based I think) I let them autonegotiate as it then does a better job of link failure detection.

For EI devices I usually let them autonegotiate as the Intel 82559 based NICs seem to do autonegotiate better than the DEC SGEC, LANCE and other such chips used in the earlier Alpha NICs.

What is a real pain is if the site uses unmanaged switches and the Alpha NIC doesn't do autonegotiate well with that switch. I have that myself with my old PSW500au and a 3Com 10/100 switch, so I generally see what the switch thinks (look at the LEDs), then set the Alpha to the same state at console level. Usually works.

Cheers, Colin (www.xdelta.co.uk).