k570 11i - full duplex problem

[Eileen Millen]

We have a problem with 11.11 and getting our K570 to go to full duplex. I searched the forums and found a message about this problem on 11.00. If in SAM, the Half duplex area is greyed out, then we will have to install the patches again.
What are the patches for 11.11?
Do we have to swremove the fibre software and reinstall it, also?
Thanks Eileen

[Steven E. Protter]

The full duplex problems are with network cards, not fibre cards.

I had the duplex issues on 11.00

If its a GSC card see this file

/etc/rc.config.d/hpgsc100conf

HP_GSC100_INTERFACE_NAME[0]=lan0
HP_GSC100_STATION_ADDRESS[0]=
HP_GSC100_SPEED[0]=100FD


HP_GSC100_INIT_ARGS="HP_GSC100_STATION_ADDRESS HP_GSC100_DUPLEX"

lanadmin is useful for diagnosis, but you should know this if its a NIC card problem.

I don't think swinstall/swremove is going to help much if the configuration is wrong.

Steve

[Michael Tully]

Hi Eileen,

I wouldn't use 'sam' to do this, configure the file yourself as suggested by Steven.

Use the
# lanadmin -X 100FD 0

to configure the card. (assuming 0 is your lan card in question) You will get a delay of about 10 seconds while the card resets itself. This can be done on-line. Editing the config file is for the next reboot.

HTH
Michael

[Steven E. Protter]

There are similar files in /etc/rc.config.d/ for other types of cards. That directory includes all important networking configurations.

I warn agains sam for this job. Sam might cause networking problems. Much better to take a go slow approach and use vi and the right configuration file.

Go ahead and post up the diagnostics that lead you to believe the NIC card is not funning full duplex. Post an ioscan and myself or others can guide you through it if you wish.

Steve

[eran maor]

Hi

the patch that deal with this on hp-ux 11.00 was the LAN patch .

you shuold need to have this patch also on the hp-ux 11.11
the last patch : PHNE_25388 - s700_800 11.11 LAN product cumulative patch .

i dont recommend to change the config file in the /etc/rc.config.d because it the switch is not config to work with 100FD it will cause problem .

check the port on the switch to see how he is config ( most of the time the problem with full duplex it that the port in not config correctry ) .

if you didnt config the card in the /etc/rc.config.d/configfile and the port is config as 100FD you will not have any problem .

you didnt gave the name of your card that we will check to see if he support 100FD , but most of the card support it .

it is not an issue with a software

[Eileen Millen]

Thanks for the responses.
Sorry, I was in a rush to leave last night.
I really did not mean to type fibre software.

When I searched the forums and found out that someone had a problem with SAM showing greyed out duplex options, I check our system and it was also greyed out. The system was only running at half duplex at the time.
I was hoping that a patch would fix it.
When we run
lanadmin -X 100FD 0
It does go to full duplex
The SAM display no longer has the grey out area and could be changed.
Normally we don't use SAM for this.

After bootup lanadmin shows
Description = lan0 Hewlett-Packard 10/100Base-TX Half-Duplex Hw Rev 0
lanadmin -X 100FD 0


# ioscan -funC lan
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
===================================================================
lan 0 10/4/8 btlan1 CLAIMED INTERFACE HP HP-PB 100 Base TX card
/dev/diag/lan0 /dev/ether0 /dev/lan0

Eran,
Are you suggesting that we leave all of the /etc/rc.config.d config files empty?
The card did support 100FD at 11.00.

Thanks,
Eileen

[fg_1]

There are certain network cards that do not support 100FD settings.

If you do a lanadmin -X 100FD 0 and it does not go to that setting, then the other thing
that you may check is on your network switch port settings to see what the settings are there.

There have been known issues of auto_negotiating being set and forcing NIC cards to not support 100FD but only 100HD

Gl.

[eran maor]

Hi

yes , i think that it is recommend to define the switch to be 100FD and
Auto-Negotiation will be on
on the switch
if you want you can use lanadmin -x reports the current setting and lanadmin -X will change the setting without a reboot.

i think that it is better to tell the switch to do the job and do the define over there .

you can change the config file file but you will need also to check the define of the port in the switch

[Uwe Geissler]

I found that hp-ux seems to have a general problem with autonegotiation. At least with Cisco Switches it seems, that allmost allways hp-ux detects 100HD when the switch is set to 100FD w/o autonegotiation.
So we tend to always set both switches and hp boxes to 100FD using the /etc/rc.config.d files.

[Scott Corzine · Accepted solution]

Uwe,

Actually, HP-UX isn't being broken here (nor is Cisco), the ethernet spec creates a very bad situation when one end is forced to 100FD w/o autonegotiation and the other is trying to autonegotiate.

What happens is that the HP-UX box doesn't see the autonegotiate sequence, but can tell by sensing the physical layer that the link is running at 100 not 10, but it doesn't know if the remote side is FD capable, so it must assume HD operations only. This is required by the spec.

Unfortunately, what that creates is a link that works fine under very light loads, but then falls apart under high traffic loads (in one direction only). The Cisco is in FD, so it transmits the acks (etc) at the same time the HP-UX system is transmitting the next packet. The HP-UX system sees this as a collision and trashes both packets, going into retransmit modes, while the Cisco thinks it sucessfully sent the ack. Then the TCP (or other higher level) retransmit timers have to get into the game to try and save the day. Things collapse, but when you try a simple ping, it works.

I'm told by many other old-timers that autonegotiation doesn't work at all, but no one can actually come up with an actual example (some very ancient hardware may have had problems). I've never encountered a problem when everything used autonegotiation, but have fixed 5 different sites who had network performance problems, simply by forcing them back to autonegotiation.

But hey, it creates lots of easy work for us consultants... :-)

Moral: Either (a) use autonegotiation on everything in your network, or (b) make a clear network policy forcing everything to be 100 FD (and constantly fight the fires of systems not configured). It should be obvious that (a) is the right choice w/o extenuating circumstances.

-Scott-

[Eileen Millen]

Thanks to everyone who responded.

We had the /etc/rc.config.d/hpbtlanconf file setup with
lan 0 and
100FD entries
The system came up in half duplex with autonegotiating on
A coworker pointed out that on another K box at 11i, the
/etc/rc.config.d/hpbasetconf
file was the one she used and that system does boot up at 100FD.
We are going to try using the hpbasetconf file
and won't find out if it worked until Monday.

on our A and N class systems, we have the hpbtlanconf files setup.
Thanks for all your help.
Eileen