We had to do the same thing on R410's. We ran into a situation where the one of the interfaces would stop working, and ethtool would show "no link". Restarting network wouldn't fix anything, only a reboot would resolve the problem. Moving to the Broadcomm provided driver has solved this for us.
Dave On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Carlson, Timothy S <[email protected]> wrote: > I've moved away from the RHEL/Centos driver and have gone directly to the > bnx2 driver from Broadcomm. > > dmesg | grep bnx > Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet Driver bnx2 v1.9.20b (July 9, 2009) > bnx2: eth0: using MSI > > That driver seems stable for me. I was seeing your things similar to your > problem and this driver fixed things right up for me. > > http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/driver-sla.php?driver=NX2-Linux > > You'll need to download that driver and rebuild it from the SRPM. You'll also > need to rebuild the driver for each kernel update which is a pain. > > Tim > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Sparenberg > Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 1:08 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Returning Network stability problems on R710 servers and BCM5709 > > All, > > I'm referencing an earlier thread from last Sept. > > http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2009-September/040252.html > > In it there was a discussion related to stability problems with the > Broadcom BCM5709 on a Dell r610, where there would be a loss of connectivity > for new connections but existing connections, or all connections of a > different protocol passed. > > For example. Just now I lost the ability to ping eth0, or get NIS > authentication on that IP, I also lost the ability to get TFTP connections > via the eth1 address. However at the same time DHCP is running against eth1, > and SNMP NTP and HTTP over port 10000 (webmin) where merrily working quite > well on eth0. > > OS CentOS 5.4 > > kernel 2.6.18-164.10.1.el5 SMP x86_64 > Kernel module bk2 > > modinfo output > > filename: > /lib/modules/2.6.18-164.10.1.el5.centos.plus/kernel/drivers/net/bnx2.ko > version: 1.9.3 > license: GPL > description: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706/5708/5709/5716 Driver > author: Michael Chan <[email protected]> > srcversion: 1040A42F87B8BE8A019736C > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000163Csv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000163Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000163Asv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d00001639sv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d000016ACsv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d000016AAsv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d000016AAsv0000103Csd00003102bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000164Csv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000164Asv*sd*bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000164Asv0000103Csd00003106bc*sc*i* > alias: pci:v000014E4d0000164Asv0000103Csd00003101bc*sc*i* > depends: > vermagic: 2.6.18-164.10.1.el5.centos.plus SMP mod_unload gcc-4.1 > parm: disable_msi:Disable Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) (int) > parm: enable_entropy:Allow bnx2 to populate the /dev/random entropy > pool (int) > module_sig: > 883f3504b47af9bd3b84a368dd51f2112b6b90a0ed1bac15e1b94720602336594dc65775db83c460991575cc8694cf9c03aca6e623e0950281e5094 > > So you can see that the version I have exceeds the version said to be stable > in the prior thread. BTW this chassis is about 1 month old so it should (but > unverified) have the latest BIOS. > > Ironic part. Same model running the same version/kernel of CentOS (kick > start install so all my boxes are the same) is running some load testing > pushing millions of sessions and billions (soaking 4 1G nics) of packets > without a hitch in our LAB, testing out equipment, yet, this box which has a > relatively low throughput is the one that locks up. > > Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. So far nothing in normal > logs so I'm going to turn some additional logging on. > > James Sparenberg > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-PowerEdge mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge > Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-PowerEdge mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge > Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq > _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list [email protected] https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
