Hello, I have been facing a problem with NICs going down temporarily and intermittently, and there's a possibilty the ixgbe driver plays a central role. The behaviour is depending on the type of switch at the other end. Looking for some expert advice here.
In brief: - Intel 82599EB connected to Nexus 4900 switch works fine. - Intel X540-AT2 connected to Nexus 3064 switch works fine. - 82599EB connected to Nexus 3064, or X540-AT2 to Nexus 4900, have intermittent interface down events lasting a few seconds. There may be two such events one day, none the next, and 50 the day after, just as an example. Traffic levels do not seem to play a role, but then, with mrtg, I may not have the required resolution. Sep 5 10:56:16 host kernel: ixgbe 0000:04:00.0: eth0: NIC Link is Down Sep 5 10:56:20 host kernel: ixgbe 0000:04:00.0: eth0: NIC Link is Up 10 Gbps, Flow Control: RX/TX What could be the reason, and can I get debug info from the driver to help iwth understanding ? All servers run CentOS5/6 and the driver versions involved are 3.9.15-k, 3.17.3, and 3.18.7. While there are different server makes and models affected, this behaviour definitely follows the NIC+switch combination. During the event, there is zero traffic through the interface (according to tcpdump), as you would expect with link down. My current working theory is that flow control settings may be the culprit. All servers have RX/TX on. The Nexus 4900 has RX/TX on, the 3064 off. I found that ethtool doesn't allow me to switch RX/TX off unless I also switch autoneg off, so I'm reduced to playing with the resp. switch settings. I take it that flow control (layer 2?) is not something that is autonegotiated between NIC/driver and switch? Any ideas? I only came across this list a few days ago. Neither Cisco nor Intel community forums have been any help so far. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that matters. http://tv.slashdot.org/ _______________________________________________ E1000-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/e1000-devel To learn more about Intel® Ethernet, visit http://communities.intel.com/community/wired
