Configure LAN interfaces FAIL

[Mark Burgman]

I am at a loss. I have (4) b2600 workstations running HP-UX 10.2 with a 10/100 LAN port built into the motherboard. The IP address range in the hosts file is 129.204.24.101 through 108.
I have them all plugged into a layer 3 switch, and at one point they were all loading and booting up fine. Now, no matter what I do I cannot get them to read OK at the "Configure LAN interfaces" line and I am not sure what I did to cause this. Once the machines boot completes, if I run "ifconfig lan0" I get:
"lan0: flags=863
inet 129.204.24.106 netmask ffff0000 broadcast 129.204.255.255"
I added the IP addresses using "sam", and have gone so far as to totally reload the OS on one of the machines. The first time the machine reboots after being rebuilt, the Configure LAN interfaces reads "OK", but if I immediately reboot, it shows FAIL, and continues to from that point on. I cannot figure out what I have done to all of a sudden start failing. Another (possibly unrelated) symptom is that the CDE environment on the rebuilt machine occasionally locks up. Any ideas?

[Mel Burslan]

according to the ifconfig lan0 command output, your interface seems to be doing fine. although I must adming 255.255.0.0 subnet mask seemed a bit strange to me unless these machines are members of a huge network.
if you are not the network administrator yourself, I would suggest talking to the net admin person and getting the correct subnet mask and trying to change it. Usually, 255.255.255.0 is a common subnet mask to use but it changes from one network to the other.

Also a test to perform is to ping the broadcast address of the interface and see if anything other than its own ip address is responding to the query.

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi Mark,

The interface (lan0) can be set to autonegotiation. This does not always work correct. The check the current speed/duplex settings you could:
# lanscan
To retreve the ppa number (i guess it is 0)
# lanadmin -x 0
to view current settings
# lanadmin -X 100FD 0
(Or 10 FD )
To make these settings permanent edit the /etc/rc.config.d/hpbtlanconf ( or other interface file)

These settings also need to be set on the switch port. So If you specify 100 FD or 10 FD on the server match these settings on the switch.

Hope this helps,

Gideon

[Jeff_Traigle]

This may sounds silly, but have you tested to see if the interface is actually communicating even after you get that "failed" message? Assuming your netmask is correct, the ifconfig output looks all right. I had several 735s running 9.0x at my previous job that would give me bogus (well, maybe non-critical would be a better term) errors like that, but everything still worked fine.

Have you checked /etc/rc.log? Clues to the cause should be in there.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Mark,

Well, I would suspect either a problem in the /etc/rc.config.d/netconf file - a type in there or something or a problem with the net startup scripts.
I don't have any 10.2 systems anymore, but in 11.x the scripts are in /sbin/rc2.d & named S008net.init (loopbacks, TCP stack & TCP tunables) and S340net (IPs & routes)
So definitely check the /etc/rc.log for these sections as that's probably where the errors are occurring.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Mark Burgman]

An update. Aftewr reviewing the rc.log, I see that two scripts (S008net.sd and S340net) are both linked to the same file, /sbin/init.d/net, and are both being run at startup, S008net.sd running first. They both try to run ifconfig against lan0, but the command fails in the S008net.sd script (exit status 1) and passes in S340net. So it looks like the interface is getting set up, but I would still like to find out why the first script fails. This is on a new HP 10.20 install, hooked up to an intelligent switch.
Any ideas?

[Sriram Narayanaswamy]

Does S008net.sd fail without any error message? /sbin/init.d/net seems to print some
error message whenever it exits with $ERROR...

[Bharat Katkar]

Could you refer /etc/rc.log file for detail error message.

[Bernhard Mueller]

Mark,

I do not have a 10.20 machine to double-check, however IMHO S008net... should be a link to another script that configures *only* the loopback interface (sbin/init.d/net.init)

Check if you have both /sbin/init.d/net and /sbin/init.d/net.init (or similar) and correct the links.

Regards,
Bernhard

[Naveej.K.A]

Hi,
on a working 10.2 machine, @ /sbin/rc2.d looks like.

ls -l S*net*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys 16 Jun 10 1996 S008net.sd -> /sbin/in
it.d/net
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys 18 Jun 10 1996 S300nettl -> /sbin/ini
t.d/nettl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys 16 Jun 10 1996 S340net -> /sbin/init.
d/net
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root sys 18 Jun 10 1996 S500inetd -> /sbin/ini
t.d/inetd

so the links are correct.
regds
Naveej

[Mark Burgman]

Sorry to have not included the rc.log error message. It reads as follows:

Configure LAN Interfaces
Output from "/sbin/rc2.d/S008net.sd start":
-----------------------------------------
ifconfig lan0 129.204.24.103 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 129.204.24.255 up
ERROR: lan0 interface: ifconfig: no such interface
"/sbin/rc2.d/S008net.sd start" FAILED

Adding some debug messaging shows the ifconfig line fails with a status=1. When the same "ifconfig lan0" command executes later (running as S340net) in rc.log, the ifconfig lan0 line passes with status=0, so that even when S008net.sd fails on boot, the network still seems to be functioning ok on login, ping, ftp etc. Even with the network up, I would still love to know why the script fails and if there are any repercussions I am not aware of. An interesting point is that the S340net.sd script is run after rc.log file shows that the "Configure HP ethernet interfaces" and "Configure HP 100BT interfaces" scripts are executed successfully which I am beginning to think is important. Also, I have been testing a while, and have seen the S008net.sd script pass on occasion, usually by bringing the system up off the network once (FAIL), and then bringing it up attached to a 10BT hub (PASS). But the very next time I reboot it, it fails again.