[CentOS] Network tuning for working with very old Solaris

[Wade Hampton]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 1:49 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote:
> JohnS wrote:
>> On Sat, 2010-03-27 at 13:02 -0400, Wade Hampton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>  I can't ping the Solaris box
>>> from any of the servers on my network.
>>>
>> ---
>>  That in it self should tell you to look at the cabling and nic card. I
>> suspect its a very old nic card like ISA or begining PCI.  Just because
>> it is Sol 5 does not mean TCP/IP will not work.
>>
>
> SunOS 5.7 is Solaris 7, actually.    'Solaris 10' is really SunOS 5.10.
>
> Bill Joy wrote the TCP stack thats in all Unix systems, and was copied
> for Linux.    There's nothing wrong with the TCP in any SunOS version
> going as far back as you like.
AFIK copied to Windows 2K and later as well....
>
> btw, an older Sun Sparc is more likely to be SBUS and not ISA.  If its
> PCI, its likely 64bit and maybe 66Mhz.    SBUS is a 32bit synchronous
> bus thats somewhat slower at clock speed than 32bit 33MHz PCI, however
> its capable of higher throughput due to being a more efficient bus protocol.

Standard, old PCI.
>
> me, I'd get on the console (most Sparc's newer than about 10 years old
> have a ALOM or RSC or whatever remote console module you can telnet or
> ssh to, older ones were almost all serial console, which is typically
> connected to a cyclades type console controller you can ssh to), and run
> some diags from there (check dmesg for any events, check ifconfig, ndd,
> and verify the settings, see if you can ping, etc)

Thanks.  The Solaris server is on PC hardware and is running CDE.
I can log into it even when it can't connect to the network.

The ethernet driver is /dev/elx (/dev/elxl0 and /dev/elxl1).  The
card is a 3Com Etherlink XL PCI card connected to a 3Ccom switch.

Trying ndd /dev/elx \? results in "couldn't push module 'elx'.....
so no idea how to tune it.  I can run ndd /dev/ip \?  and I get
a list of tuneables....

I've been copying data TO the Solaris box for years without
problems (it is a test machine).  However, when I try to get
data back to my Linux server, the Solaris server seems to
lose its networking and I have to reboot it.

The last thing that wireshark displays is a bunch of ACK's from
my Linux box to the Solaris box (there are multiple connections
open).

I am about ready to go home as rebooting this Solaris is getting
rather old.
--
Wade Hampton