Whats ethtool / mii-tool secret?

[shane stixrud org]

You would think that someone using Linux in a production setting for the 
last 9 years could figure this out.....  But what is Redhat's recommended 
way of setting a nic cards speed / duplex at boot time?

In my specific case I have a Dell poweredge 2550 using the tg3 nic card 
driver.  ethtool seems to be able to query this device fine, but when 
attempting to change a setting with "ethtool eth0 -s autoneg off speed 100 
duplex full" nothing seems to happen.  I do seem to be able to make 
changes with mii-tool but ethtool does not report that changes have 
occured...

I noticed that /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup has a $ETHTOOL_OPTS 
definition that it checks for... but none of the documentation mentions 
where to define this... nor does there appear to be a mii-tool equivilent 
definition.  You would think something this basic would be 
simple to do/figure out and perhaps even documented somewhere :)

-- 
"People position you as the nemesis to Bill Gates. He started Microsoft and 
you started Linux, the big competition to Microsoft's dominance of operating 
systems. Is that an unfair or inaccurate characterization?" --New York Times

"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely 
unintentional side effect. --Linus" 
                                                                              --