locking down 100Mbit FDX on BCM5700 and bonding

[Scott Farwell]

I am having difficulty getting my BCM5700 cards on an HP DL380 G3 chassis to lock down to 100Mbit Full Duplex. The systems are running Redhat 7.3 (mixed 2.4.18-3 and 2.4.20-28.7 kernels). These machines have the HP support pack. This is a requirement at a customer site. Also, "ethtools" from the command line seems to set the cards OK, but putting "ETHTOOL_OPTS=speed 100 duplex full autoneg off" into the ifcfg-eth0 & ifcfg-eth1 files doesn't automatically configure these settings on boot-up. I have read several threads on a couple of different forums that point to the bonding driver causing the issue. Further threads point to just the HP supplied bonding driver (which fails to uninstall cleanly so you can roll back). Would adding the line "options bcm5700 auto_speed=0 line_speed=100 full_duplex=1" to the /etc/modules.conf file help anything ? I can test anything immediately...so let your suggestions flow.

[Stuart Browne]

Your using the HP supplied 'bcm5700' driver?

If yes, then yes. Put that exact line in your '/etc/modules.conf', and give it a restart.

[Steven E. Protter]

My search shows that the driver itself may not be the most reliable thing HP ever released. In addition to what you are doing, I'd suggest checking if you have the latest bcm5700 driver and bonding driver.

SEP

[Scott Farwell]

Yes, I installed the Proliant Support pack from HP's support website. The 2.4.18-3 kernel boxes have the PSP from July 2003, but the 2.4.20-28.7 kernel boxes which are the boxes currently running the bonding, have the latest HP PSP from 12/03 or newer. The BCM and Bonding drivers are installed. I re-installed the latest bonding driver recently. Besides the kernel update, no updates have been performed on the machine since it was installed from CD. These systems are on a heavily guarded closed network so security is not an issue, compatibility is, so no updates or patches were applied.
I don't have any documented options for the modules.conf file, I just looked at a couple of posts and surmised that the "options bcm5700 auto_speed=0 line_speed=100 full_duplex=1" settings would set it to 100Mbut Full Duplex with auto-negotiation off. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Stuart Browne]

Your not. Do it. Tell us if you have further issues.

[Jeroen Peereboom · Accepted solution]

L.S.

the command modinfo will give you information on the bcm5700 driver.
It show all parms, but it is not clear what values are accepted:
linux]# modinfo bcm5700
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.9-e.40smp/kernel/drivers/addon/bcm5700/bcm5700.o
description: "BCM5700 Driver"
author: "Michael Chan "
license: "GPL"
parm: debug int
parm: line_speed int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: auto_speed int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: full_duplex int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: rx_flow_control int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: tx_flow_control int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: auto_flow_control int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: mtu int array (min = 1, max = 16)
...
...


The options you mention are correct.

By the way, did you see my question: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=517376

(I am not working on that issue right now).

JP.

[Scott Farwell]

Ok....I removed the "ETHTOOL_OPTS=speed 100 duplex full autoneg off" from the ifcfg-eth0 & ifcfg-eth1 files, then I inserted " options bcm5700 auto_speed=0 line_speed=100 full_duplex=1" into my /etc/modules.conf file right after the 2 alias entries for the bcm5700. This seems to automatically set eth0 correctly to 100Mbit FDX Auto-neg off but doesn't set eth1's parameters the same.

My /etc/modules.conf looks like :

alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
alias scsi_hostadapter cciss
alias eth0 bcm5700
alias eth1 bcm5700
options bcm5700 auto_speed=0 line_speed=100 full_duplex=1
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
alias char-major-237 off
alias bond0 bonding
options bond0 miimon=100 primary=eth0 mode=1


Any suggestions ??

[Scott Farwell]

I finally got it working with a little help from HP support. The "options bcm5700 auto_speed=0 line_speed=100 full_duplex=1" entry I added to /etc/modules.conf needed changed to "options bcm5700 auto_speed=0,0 line_speed=100,100 full_duplex=1,1" so that it would set both interfaces. I am now using the default /sbin/ifup and I am not using any ETHTOOLS options in the ifcfg- scripts for any interface. I do get an error "SIOCADDRT: File exists" right after it stopes and restarts the interfaces on the command "service network restart". Any idea what that is caused by ?

[Don Vanco - Linux Ninja]

Couple of possibly worthy footnotes -
The above mods also hold true for SLES 8.
Note that if you do _not_ include the "auto=speed=0" other speed/duplex setting (will/may) get ignored.
You can verify that your changes have taken place by looking at /proc/net/nicinfo/ethX.info (where X = interface in question) or by looking at the output of /var/log/messages when you pull and re-insert the module.
Lastly, it's a good idea to run "depmod -a" after editing modules.conf - some kernels (like those under SuSE) will check it against modules.dep and generate a nag if the dates are skewed.

YMMV
Don