[CentOS] CentOS 4.4 Strange hang on a poweredge 2900.

[Damon L. Chesser]

On Tue, 2006-12-26 at 10:31 -0800, Peter Serwe wrote:
> Damon L. Chesser wrote:
> > Not answering your question, but I have to ask, what does ifconfig -a 
> > do?  I man ifconfig and it does not show an -a switch.  Looked it up 
> > on the Internet, still can't find a -a switch.
> >
> > It seems like this is a NIC issue or I/O of the MB.  Do you have 
> > another NIC you can test it with?
> I think that's hilarious about the -a switch.  Perhaps if you typed it 
> on the command line you'd see.  :)
> 
> For some reason, CentOS 4.4's man page doesn't have the "-a" switch.
> 
> Excerpt from man 8 ifconfig under FreeBSD 6.2:
> (not relevant per se to CentOS, but documents the flag)
> 
>      Optionally, the -a flag may be used instead of an interface name.  This
>      flag instructs ifconfig to display information about all interfaces in
>      the system.  The -d flag limits this to interfaces that are down, 
> and -u
>      limits this to interfaces that are up.  When no arguments are given, -a
>      is implied.
> 
> And output from 'ifconfig --help' on the CentOS 4.4 command line:
> 
>     root at cfcu alias# ifconfig --help
>     Usage:
>     ifconfig [-a] [-i] [-v] [-s] <interface> [[<AF>] <address>]
> 
> The very top line of the --help usage guide.  (with no further explanation).
> 
> Also, -a is not implied in CentOS's ifconfig, you get more complete output
> on a CentOS box with it.
>  
> I have to look around for a NIC.  Not being able to use the GB NIC's the 
> system came with will be mildy
> problematic at best.  I need the I/O throughput, and I don't have any 
> spare GB Nic's laying around, although
> I do have a dual port Intel I can test with for a few minutes.
> 
> Peter

I surmised the meaning of the -a switch by running it and I also did the
ifconfig --help and found, like you, it was listed but no meaning given.
I was just baffled by a switch not listed.  Learn something new every
day.  

Have you checked support.dell.com for a nick driver?  I don't know about
the linux versions as I have not worked on Dell linux boxes, but the
windows versions have updated drivers there for all the components like
TOE (not applicable to you as the TOE feature does not work in linux).
Perhaps you just need an updated driver for the Gigabyte NIC?


-- 
Damon L. Chesser
damon at damtek.com
damon at okfairtax.org