[gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[Frank.Pikelner]

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I'm trying to use "mii-tool" to configure the NIC speed and duplex on a
Dell 2850 server (currently auto negotiates and has negotiated
100/half). The switch port is configured for 100/full. The Dell 2850
server uses the Broadcom chipset for the NIC and is a 10/100/1000 port.
Every time I try to force the port using mii-tool, the server port stops
responding and I have to reboot the box. Someone mentioned that mii-tool
may not be the correct tool and to try ethtool. My question is will
mii-tool work with a 10/100/1000 port? Should I be using ethtool under
Gentoo and if so where do I get it/install it?

 

Thanks,

 

Frank

 





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Re: [gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[kashani]

Frank.Pikelner@blue-dot.ca wrote:
> 
> I’m trying to use “mii-tool” to configure the NIC speed and duplex on a 
> Dell 2850 server (currently auto negotiates and has negotiated 
> 100/half). The switch port is configured for 100/full. The Dell 2850 
> server uses the Broadcom chipset for the NIC and is a 10/100/1000 port. 
> Every time I try to force the port using mii-tool, the server port stops 
> responding and I have to reboot the box. Someone mentioned that mii-tool 
> may not be the correct tool and to try ethtool. My question is will 
> mii-tool work with a 10/100/1000 port? Should I be using ethtool under 
> Gentoo and if so where do I get it/install it?

	I've found that ethtool support more cards than mii-tool. In order to 
install it I'd do the following

echo "sys-apps/ethtool ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge ethtool

Using the unstable version will install ethtool3 rather than 2. 3 is a 
year or two newer than 2.

kashani
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Re: [gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[Joshua Schmidlkofer]

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Frank,

You are not supposed to statically configure hubs and switches. I don't know
what the problem is - however, please be sure that the hub/switch is set to
auto-sense. If you cannot get a connection established that way, please try
the cable etc. I would also recommend following the other suggestion of
emerging the later tools.

thanks,
joshua

p.s. A fellow at Cisco last year wrote an article about NIC negotiation.
Apparently the only setting that consistently works is auto.



On 10/25/05, kashani <kashani-list@badapple.net> wrote:
>
> Frank.Pikelner@blue-dot.ca wrote:
> >
> > I'm trying to use "mii-tool" to configure the NIC speed and duplex on a
> > Dell 2850 server (currently auto negotiates and has negotiated
> > 100/half). The switch port is configured for 100/full. The Dell 2850
> > server uses the Broadcom chipset for the NIC and is a 10/100/1000 port.
> > Every time I try to force the port using mii-tool, the server port stops
> > responding and I have to reboot the box. Someone mentioned that mii-tool
> > may not be the correct tool and to try ethtool. My question is will
> > mii-tool work with a 10/100/1000 port? Should I be using ethtool under
> > Gentoo and if so where do I get it/install it?
>
> I've found that ethtool support more cards than mii-tool. In order to
> install it I'd do the following
>
> echo "sys-apps/ethtool ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
> emerge ethtool
>
> Using the unstable version will install ethtool3 rather than 2. 3 is a
> year or two newer than 2.
>
> kashani
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[kashani]

Joshua Schmidlkofer wrote:
> Frank,
> 
>   You are not supposed to statically configure hubs and switches. I 
> don't know what the problem is - however, please be sure that the 
> hub/switch is set to auto-sense.  If you cannot get a connection 
> established that way, please try the cable etc.   I would also recommend 
> following the other suggestion of emerging the later tools.
> 

What Joshua says. I missed that in the original email. Linux more so 
than Solaris, which isn't that great either, seems to go out of it's way 
to get the wrong setting when you hard set a switch port to full duplex. 
Don't know if that's a switch thing or a Linux thing. Setting auto 
negotiate works best these days though there is quite a bit of 
documentation that says the opposite from 4-6 years ago when that wasn't 
always the case.

kashani
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Re: [gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[Hamish Marson]

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Joshua Schmidlkofer wrote:

> Frank,
>
> You are not supposed to statically configure hubs and switches. I
> don't know what the


Sorry, I disagree. You are supposed to configure switches & hubs for
static and NOT auto. Auto detect is a broken protocol. If you can even
be that charitable. AFAIK it's not even a proper standard.

If you don't configure statically you get mismatches and then
collisions...


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Re: [gentoo-user] mii-tool on Dell 2850 with 10/100/1000 ports

[kashani]

Hamish Marson wrote:
> Sorry, I disagree. You are supposed to configure switches & hubs for
> static and NOT auto. Auto detect is a broken protocol. If you can even
> be that charitable. AFAIK it's not even a proper standard.
> 
> If you don't configure statically you get mismatches and then
> collisions...

	You can't really configure full duplex on a hub... well if you could it 
would be a switch. That brings us to the next point that many switchs 
don't have interfaces to set the switch side to full duplex so you're 
stuck with auto-negotiation. And the only thing more broken than 
auto-neg is setting one side and not the other. And finally many network 
drivers don't support setting full duplex when the driver is loaded so 
you're stuck tryiing to run something in rc.local... assuming ethtool or 
mii-tool supports the card and many cards aren't supported.

	In summary, doing away with auto-neg does tend to solve the problem, 
but there are significant barriers to doing this in many enviroments.

kashani
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