Broadcom NIC problems

[bath]

Hello,
We are using HP XW4100 using a Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5782 Gigabit Ethernet. We tried running Suse 9.1 with a kernel 2.6.4-52-smp. We have exhausted all our means in connecting to the network. It is detecting the card but the speed and duplex are reported as unknown when we run ethtool. It just does not connect to the network. I was wondering if you can provide any pointers. I had downloaded the BCM5700 drivers and did a rpmbuild but no success.
BATH

[Steven E. Protter]

I have been there and done that with Gigabit and Linux. After wasting a lot of money the only Gigabit NIC that i can get to autodetect in even Linux 2.6.x kernel is the Intel card.

I have found support for Gigabit to be sorely lacking in Linux. Even those that say go ahead and compile don't provide adequate documentation.

The good news is the Intel desktop NIC is $55.

SEP

[Rick Garland]

Am using the same NIC on HP/Compaq PC (I forget the model but it has a P4 chip). It was detecting the NIC to use the tg3 driver which is somewhat brain-dead. Got the bcm5700 driver and loaded it. Changed the /etc/modules.conf from tg3 to bcm5700 and rmmod the tg3 module and installed bcm5700 module.

The tg3 driver would only allow me to vconnect at 100baseTx-HD. If I try to change to 100baseTx-FD then the networking would die altogether. Changing to use the bcm5700 allows me to go 100baseTx-FD.

For Gigabit, there is a kernel modification that can be turned on specifically for the Broadcom BCM57xx Gigabit cards. This requires a rebuild of the kernel.

[Ross Minkov]

Rick,

What is that kernel modification for Gigabit that can be turned on specifically for the Broadcom BCM57xx Gigabit cards?

Thanks,
Ross

[bath]

I was able to fix the problem installing the driver from Broadcom as a kernel module and removing the tg3 module. While installing the module with insmod I changed the speed, duplex and auto settings to work with our network. So my problem is fixed.

Thanks for your replies.

[Rick Garland]

Under the section of "Network Device Support"

[Aubertin_1]

Hi,

don't forget to prepare the kernel source to compil the bcm5700 driver. In Redhat you have to do:

cd /usr/src/
make mrproper
cp configs/kernel.config .config
make oldconfig
make dep

then you can run rpmbuild --rebuild bcm....src.rpm

If you don't did it before, you will have no success to driver compilation or dependance symbol error.

Good Luke.
Regards.
Athos10