Hello,
I have installed CentOS 5 onto a server this afternoon using NFS. The NFS 'server' has a 100Mb/full-duplex interface, the server I installed CentOS on to has 4 x 100Mb interfaces. However, the installation was painfully slow to start with, and by using ctrl-alt-f2/f4/f5 I could see that contact with the NFS server was intermitently failing. Soon after some of the packages had installed the 'ethtool' command was then available, and I could see that the (installation) server NIC had been set to 100Mb but at half-duplex. This was causing numerous collisions and errors on the NIC interface. As soon as I reset the NIC to full-duplex (via ctrl-alt-f2 and using ethtool), then the installation speeded up and seemed to cause no more errors.
My question is, how can I tell anaconda to set the NIC interface options such as speed and duplex? I have another server to install which has 2 x gigabit NICs and 2 x 100MB NIC's. My concern is that anaconda will again use wrong NIC parameters, and the installation will again be very slow. Surely it is possible to set the NIC options?
John.
My question is, how can I tell anaconda to set the NIC interface options such as speed and duplex? I have another server to install which has 2 x gigabit NICs and 2 x 100MB NIC's. My concern is that anaconda will again use wrong NIC parameters, and the installation will again be very slow. Surely it is possible to set the NIC options?
On the boot line, use the following to set your first ethernet interface to use 100Mb/s full-duplex ethernet:
eth0_ethtool="autoneg=off speed=100 duplex=full"
Barry
On Mon, 2007-06-25 at 18:08 -0500, Barry Brimer wrote:
My question is, how can I tell anaconda to set the NIC interface options such as speed and duplex? I have another server to install which has 2 x gigabit NICs and 2 x 100MB NIC's. My concern is that anaconda will again use wrong NIC parameters, and the installation will again be very slow. Surely it is possible to set the NIC options?
On the boot line, use the following to set your first ethernet interface to use 100Mb/s full-duplex ethernet:
eth0_ethtool="autoneg=off speed=100 duplex=full"
Okay, that seems easy enough :-) Thanks. However, is the anaconda NIC ordering the same as those listed by the bios? For a mixed NIC server it could be important.
John.
John Horne wrote:
Okay, that seems easy enough :-) Thanks. However, is the anaconda NIC ordering the same as those listed by the bios? For a mixed NIC server it could be important.
not always. I've got some Intel SE7501WV2 based dual xeon servers which have dual intel pro1000 NICs onboard... the BIOS, MS Windows, etc think the one labled '0' on the outside is in fact the first port, but RHEL2.1 and RHEL3 at least thought that they were swapped, and that eth0 was the port labeled '1', while eth1 is the port labeled '0'.
I know I could probably force the issue, instead, I just live with it. those servers have been SO reliable I've never had to dink with them.
On Mon, 2007-06-25 at 16:51 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
John Horne wrote:
Okay, that seems easy enough :-) Thanks. However, is the anaconda NIC ordering the same as those listed by the bios? For a mixed NIC server it could be important.
not always. I've got some Intel SE7501WV2 based dual xeon servers which have dual intel pro1000 NICs onboard... the BIOS, MS Windows, etc think the one labled '0' on the outside is in fact the first port, but RHEL2.1 and RHEL3 at least thought that they were swapped, and that eth0 was the port labeled '1', while eth1 is the port labeled '0'.
Hmm, well I guess I could use the bios ordering to set the first NIC options, and if anaconda thinks anything different then just restart the installation using whatever it (anaconda) thinks is the first NIC. A pain, but basically it's either going to be 100Mb or 1000Mb! :-)
I know I could probably force the issue, instead, I just live with it. those servers have been SO reliable I've never had to dink with them.
Once the installation has done, we tend to bond the interfaces together (using active-backup mode). I have found that by creating simple udev rules, the NIC ordering no longer changes over reboots. I can then correctly set the NIC options in the ifcfg-ethx files.
John.
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Barry Brimer -
John Horne -
John R Pierce