tg3 network cards

[Ryan Steele]

Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> [...]
>
>   
>>> ipconfig is part of the klibc-utils package and most likely just tries to get an
>>> answer from your DHCP server at that very moment. 
>>>       
>> Ah, didn't know that's where it came from - thanks for the tip.  Re:  
>> 'most likely tries...' - really?  It doesn't just use the info supplied  
>> to the card initially when it boots up, DHCP's, and proceeds via PXE?  I  
>> submit, I tried to dump the binary with 'strings', but not much research  
>> beyond that yet (I'm exhausted today, been working for a long time).
>>
>>     
>
> Yes, it does DHCP on its own, no re-use of PXE's info at all (actually, I don't
> know whether that would be available at all to Linux anyway). I think, by
> default ipconfig eth0 will just do DHCP on eth0.
>
>   

Ah, ok.  I'll have to find out which interface the cable is currently 
plugged in to.  Maybe I'll get really lucky and it's eth1.

>>> If you get your system to boot
>>> by some other means, you could safely copy over ipconfig from your Debian
>>>   
>>>       
>> Ubuntu.  I apologized for only making a passing reference to that at the  
>> end of my OP.
>>
>>     
> Oh, yes, sorry, spotted your mention of Ubuntu. But that shouldn't matter that
> much, just use klibc from your Ubuntu boxes :-)
>   

Heh, yeah, I'll test that.

>   
>>> systems and just run it on the console manually to see what happens.
>>>   
>>>       
>> I tested this on a VM, and it also killed networking.  But, the VM has a  
>> virtual interface, and may not be a very good test, even if the results  
>> were the same.  I'll try to test ipconfig on a physical network  
>> interface to see if I hit the same problem.  But, like I said, I've  
>> installed other servers the same way successfully, the only difference  
>> being they had nice Intel cards, not a crappy Broadcom card.
>>
>>     
> Well, as long as the VM shows a very similar behavior, it will be useful for
> debugging from there, even though you might end up having debugged two different
> issues :-)
>   

Yeah, more information never hurts.

> [...]
>   
>>> Other than that, there is also the frequently discussed issue of systems with
>>> more than one NIC -- your ipconfig may simply be trying to get a response from
>>> the DHCP server over some interface that doesn't have any cable plugged in.
>>>   
>>>       
>> I suppose that could be the case - hadn't even occurred to me.  The box  
>> does have dual on-board NIC's, so that is a viable suggestion.  I'll do  
>> some more research on that front, see what comes of it.  Thanks for the  
>> suggestion.
>>
>>     
>
> Woo, two things to check first:
> - There are known issues with some Broadcom cards and their IPMI firmware. You
>   may or may not be able to apply these bugfixes (I think it required some DOS
>   boot disk :-( ) and they might also fully disable IPMI. I guess the net may
>   help you further along. But AFAIK the symptoms were a bit different (DHCP was
>   fine, but no NFS afterwards, and somewhat Xen-related).
> - The easier one: Check the MAC address of the interface the initrd is trying to
>   run ipconfig on. This should help you to find out whether it is using the
>   correct link.
>   

Yeah, I'll collect my thoughts and run some tests tomorrow when I'm not 
exhausted.  Thanks again for all the suggestions.


Respectfully,
Ryan