[CentOS] Network issue - Windows works but CentOS does not

xrx

xrx-centos at xrx.me
Sat Oct 27 17:54:27 UTC 2012


I am having an extremely strange issue with a BL460c1 (G1) blade on a 
c7000 enclosure. I could not for the life of me get the machine to ping 
the gateway or any other blade on the same enclosure (yes, the subnet 
mask was correct & quadruple-checked); although pinging to the local IP 
works. I was almost convinced that it was a network or hardware issue; 
until I asked someone to try installing Windows on that blade to verify 
that it was not working as well; however to my surprise it worked fine 
in Windows after installing the network driver; by just setting the IP 
address (which was the same IP I was trying to configure CentOS with).

The interfaces come up fine (eth0 & eth1); the cards are:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708S 
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708S 
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)

NetworkManager is disabled. There is no bonding configured. The network 
firmware is the latest available from the HP website (bootcode 4.4.1, 
CLP 1.3.6). The network is supposed to be simple; if I do a:

ifconfig eth0 172.12.34.112 netmask 255.255.255.0

I am supposed to be able to:

ping 172.12.34.1

However, I get:

PING 172.12.34.1 (172.12.34.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
 From 172.12.34.112 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
 From 172.12.34.112 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
 From 172.12.34.112 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
 From 172.12.34.112 icmp_seq=5 Destination Host Unreachable

I cannot even ping blades in the same enclosure. Yet in windows server 
2008 after putting the same IP pinging the same IPs works.

I tried:
- the disable_msi=1 parameter of the bnx2 driver
- a fresh install of CentOS 6.3
- a fresh install of RHEL 6.2
- a live CD of CentOS 5.5
- Clonezilla-ubuntu and systemrescuecd (kernel 3.2) live CDs
- CentOS 6.3 with the kernel(-headers,-firmware,-devel) updated to the 
latest (RPMs were copied with a USB/iLO)
- the bnx2 network driver available from the HP website
- the bnx2 network driver available from Broadcom

Other than a check_ncic warning with the stock 6.3 driver (doesn't 
appear when trying other drivers); the bnx2 isn't logging anything 
problematic when I checked with dmesg or /var/log/messages. With 
tcpdump; strangely, I get random traffic destined to different IPs 
(probably from the same enclosure), but those IPs do not ping either.

However, I got a feeling of deja vu in the midst of all this; as I 
recall setting up an RHEL machine somewhere else 2-3 years ago; and had 
the issue of the network working with Windows but not Linux; it turned 
out that it was because Autonegotiation was disabled with the gigabit 
network (the few attempts with playing with ethtool did not work); and 
searching online led me to people saying it ought to be enabled anyway 
as a standard requires it for gigabit. When the network guys enabled 
autoneg; it started working in Linux.

I am wondering if I'm facing the same issue here, as I see ethtool saying:
    Advertised auto-negotiation: No
    Speed: 1000Mb/s
I tried doing some ethtool settings (setting autoneg off and forcing 
1000, other random options, etc) but it didn't help; but possibly I was 
trying the wrong things. I am not very familiar with HP blades; but it 
seems I cannot enable Autoneg for this blade (?); I do not have direct 
access to the hardware though (everything was done through iLO).

Any of you faced issues with a gigabit network with Autoneg disabled? Or 
any other ideas? This is the only Linux machine in the entire network.


Here are some extra info:

 > ethtool eth0:
Settings for eth0:
     Supported ports: [ FIBRE ]
     Supported link modes:   1000baseT/Full
                             2500baseX/Full
     Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
     Advertised link modes:  1000baseT/Full
                             2500baseX/Full
     Advertised pause frame use: No
     Advertised auto-negotiation: No
     Speed: 1000Mb/s
     Duplex: Full
     Port: FIBRE
     PHYAD: 2
     Transceiver: internal
     Auto-negotiation: on
     Supports Wake-on: g
     Wake-on: g
     Link detected: yes
-----------------------
 > modinfo bnx2:
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/net/bnx2.ko
...
version:        2.2.1
license:        GPL
description:    Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706/5708/5709/5716 Driver
...
vermagic:       2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions
...
-----------------------
 > route -n:
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
172.12.34.0    0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     1002 0        0 eth0
0.0.0.0         172.12.34.1   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0 0 eth0
---------------------
 > ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:BB:34:FA:70
           inet addr:172.12.34.112  Bcast:172.12.34.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
           inet6 addr: fe80::219:bbff:fe34:fa70/64 Scope:Link
           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:6800 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
           RX bytes:4616962 (4.4 MiB)  TX bytes:4827 (4.7 KiB)
           Interrupt:16 Memory:f6000000-f6012800

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:BB:34:FA:78
           BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
           RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
           Interrupt:16 Memory:fa000000-fa012800

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
           inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
....

 > traceroute 172.12.34.1:
traceroute to 172.12.34.1 (172.12.34.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 172.12.34.112 (172.12.34.112) 3000.686 ms !H 3000.673 ms !H 3000.661 ms !H
....
 > traceroute 172.12.34.112
traceroute to 172.12.34.112 (172.12.34.112), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
  1 172.12.34.112 (172.12.34.112) 0.041 ms 0.011 ms 0.009 ms


-xrx










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