Newbie: BC5700 trouble ?

[Jorge Carminati]

Hi !

First post here, sorry in advance for any laguague mistake.

I'm having some weird problems with a freshly installed RH Enterprise Server 4 (Update 1) running on a ProLiant DL360 G3 with two Broadcom BC5703 NICs. This server just runs in text mode, no X11 windowing system.

Whenever I issue some command thru ssh that outputs big chunks of data, like 'rpm -qila' or 'ls -lR /' the text scroll stalls after ~3 seconds, I mean that the data just doesn't keep flowing like it should do in an interactive session.

While having this trouble I can open another ssh session without problem and if I issue a 'netstat -tunap' it shows me that the 'Send-Q' is full of bytes queued for the first ssh session; eventually it will continue sending information in a very very slow fashion, just a couple of new lines appended every 2 or 3 minutes.

I'm using RH stock kernel, '2.6.9-11.ELsmp' and the stock NIC drivers,'tg3'.

I was wondering if anybody else saw this behavior and if I should replace the tg3 driver for the bc5700 from Broadcom. May this solve my problem ? can this be related to the tg3 driver ? I've performed from a local tty the same operation and it works flawlessly.

Regarding the installation of the bc5700 driver, do I need to have a properly compiled kernel before attempting to compile the Broadcom driver ? I've tried to compile the driver from the rpm but got (without kernel source since I didn't install it):

+ exit 0
Executing(%build): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.67198
+ umask 022
+ cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD
+ cd bcm5700-8.1.55
+ make
make -C SUBDIRS=/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/bcm5700-8.1.55 modules
make: *** SUBDIRS=/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/bcm5700-8.1.55: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [default] Error 2
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.67198 (%build)

RPM build errors:
Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.67198 (%build)


Thanks in advance for any help.
J. Carminati.

[Gopi Sekar]

using bcm5700 driver is another option which is worth a try. I also suspect your switch and your LAN cable which connects this machine to the network. try changing them and see whether it makes any sense.

for building drivers you need to have kernel sources installed, install them and try rebuilding the rpm

Regards,
Gopi

[Rick Garland]

Yes, you need a working kernel. I would go as far and say the tg3 drivers are causing grief with the kernel.

The tg3 drivers have had problems.

Go to the BroadCom web site and obtain the bc5700 drivers. All downloads and instructions are on this site.

[Jorge Carminati]

Thanks to both replies!

After talking with the network guy we solved a half/full-duplex mismatch... :(

Now it's working as fast as any other of my systems.

Thanks again.