Re: MSI KT3/4 AMD motherboards and 3C905CX-TXM NIC

[ Moved from the beowulf list to the vortex driver list ]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Tony Travis wrote:

> I originally installed RH8.0 from the 'Psyche' iso distribution, then 
> updated it periodically from RHN. Recently, I installed apt-get from the 
> Fedora RH8.0 repository. I now update and upgrade from there instead.

Oh, so you are using Fedora.us packages, not Red Hat's Fedora. Sorry, I 
didn't understand the first message...

> Tried that - makes no difference: These 3C905CX NIC's are failing to 
> auto-negotiate with the Cisco switch at a low level, not failing to be 
> detected and installed by kudzu.

Are all cards connected to the same Cisco switch ? Do you have by any 
chance another switch to use for a comparison ? I'd be interested 
especially in a small non-managed switch, as there the possibility of an 
improper setting is inexistent.

> We spent quite a while deciding which boards to use: MSI are recommended 
> by AMD.

I'm not saying that the boards are bad. But there might be BIOS settings 
and kernel settings that interact in non-obvious ways.

> I'm not sure what level of auto-configuration the NIC's are capable of
> at PC BIOS level.

They don't have any configuration at BIOS level. The cards have their own 
EEPROM with default settings and eventually some internal commands used 
for Wake-On-Lan.

> The 3C905CX's appear to wake up as soon as the ATX PSU AC is powered on. 

That's because of the WOL feature - the card has to be "up" to be able to 
receive the magic packet.

> NIC's that fail to auto-negotiate end up with a flashing amber LED.

Just to be sure, have you checked (and swapped) network cables ?

> they will not work until manually reset using "mii-diag -R".

You can automate this with a line in /etc/modules.conf like:

post-install eth0 /path/to/mii-diag -R

> I thought the 3c59x driver would do something similar to initialise the
> NIC's instead of relying on the BIOS to do it or have I misunderstood
> the problem?

The autonegotiation is not restarted by the driver. This is in order to 
keep any already negotiated link; this is a feature especially for some 
Cisco switches that activate their ports 1 minute after successfull link 
establishment - the link is established usually at power-up, as you have 
observed, and by the time the driver is loaded, the port is activated so 
things like DHCP work; if the link would be reset, the 1 minute would need 
to be counted again and would induce failure of DHCP (most clients give up 
also after 1 minute).

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: [email protected]

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