Intel Gigabit problem

[Mark Denni <markd redswitch com>]

I have 8 Dell PowerEdge 1650 servers with Intel Gigabit
Network Interface chips on board. They are connected
at 100 MB/sec to a Cisco switch, model WS-C3524-XL.

Because of nfs instabilities we switched over to 3COM
nic cards. Now that we found that the instability could
be solved by changing kernel parameters, we want to go
back to using the onboard interface. (See
http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3183.html#0 for
more info about optimizing NFS under Linux.)

But I find that when I switch the card out and reconfigure
the bios to activate the Intel interface, sometimes the
network comes up for a minute and then stops working, and
sometimes it doesn't come up at all.  If I reinstall 
completely using the Dell Server Assistant CD, it seems
to come up every time.  But I'd rather not do that.

Perhaps there's an autonegotiation problem, or perhaps
the Portfast setting on the switch should be set a certain
way.  How in Linux, do you check the status of the Speed
and Duplexing of a network interface? I found that
modinfo -p e1000 gives me a list of what the parameters 
could be set to, but I want to verify what they are actually
set to.

Any ideas gratefully accepted.

- Mark Denni

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