MSI Server motherboard and Fedora Core 5 64 bits

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Wed Oct 18 20:53:17 UTC 2006


On Wed, 2006-10-18 at 11:23 -0500, Ramon Garduno-Juarez wrote:
> Greetings all:
> 
> I have a several PCs with MSI K8T Master2-FAR7 MS-9617 (v1.X)
> Workstation Boards with two AMD Opteron processors at 64 bits, to
> which I have installed Fedora Core 5 for 64 bits.
> 
> This motherboard has a Broadcom BCM5705 Gigabit Ethernet controller
> for 10/100/1000 Mbps. I also have a 3COM Gigabit Switch in order to
> make them work as a mini-cluster.
> 
> When I connect them all I can not get them to comunicate through the
> Ethernet port found in the above mentioned Motherboard. However, if I
> install a generic 10/100 Mbps Ethernet card I am able to make them
> work as a cluster, but at 100 Mbps.
> 
> My problem is that I DO NEED to get them work at 1000 Mbps, and I am
> wondering if any of you has any idea of why I can not use the Broadcom
> Ethernet port. I am afraid that Fedora Core 5 does not have the driver
> for this motherboard.

The driver for that chipset is the "tg3" driver, so make sure it's
loaded.  Also make sure you have a link light at both the switch and
the NIC.

As to why they don't work, the speed negotiation may be at fault
(happens a lot with dissimilar vendors).  You can bypass that and try to
force the NIC and the port that it plugs into into 1Gbps mode.  To do
this on the Linux box:

	ethtool -s ethX autoneg off duplex full speed 1000

replacing "ethX" with the name of your interface.  You should set the
switch similarly (autonegotiation off, full duplex, 1Gbps speed).

I have to do this on occasion with Intel NICs and Extreme Networks
switches and sometimes with Broadcom NICs and Cisco switches and other
various combinations.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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