Dear all, I've got two xSeries 346 servers here with a total of 6 Broadcom gigabit NIC's each. I'm going to build a firewall with them, but right now I'm in an early testing stage. The OS is FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE for amd64.
Each of the machines is currently configured to have an IP from our internal LAN on bge0. I use that link to ssh into the machines for testing purposes. (This is a temporary solution, of course). Both machines have their bge0 connected to our primary switch, where dozens of other computers are connected as well. Networking works normally here. Each machine also has got an IP address from a different network on the respective bge5 interface. The bge5 interfaces are connected to a switch having no other connections, i.e. this is a two machine network for testing purposes. My problem is I can ping machine #2 from machine #1 when using the IP addresses configured on the bge1 NICs. I cannot ping the other machine when using the IP addresses configured on the bge5 NICs as ARP entries remain incomplete. I can then configure bge5 to promiscous mode on one machine, and after about 10 seconds the ping starts working. Here's what ipconfig and netstat -nr say right after booting: Machine #1: bge0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING> inet XX.XX.159.253 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast XX.XX.159.255 ether 00:14:5e:ac:71:c9 bge5: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING> inet XX.XX.248.158 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast XX.XX.248.255 ether 00:10:18:11:72:40 Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif default 141.58.159.254 UGS 0 0 bge0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 0 0 lo0 XX.XX.158/23 link#1 UC 0 0 bge0 XX.XX.158.1 00:17:f2:93:01:30 UHLW 1 3 bge0 XX.XX.159.254 00:04:76:19:03:de UHLW 2 0 bge0 XX.XX.248/24 link#6 UC 0 0 bge5 Machine #2: bge0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING> inet XX.XX.159.252 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast XX.XX.159.255 ether 00:14:5e:b4:2e:82 bge5: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING> inet XX.XX.248.254 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast XX.XX.248.255 ether 00:10:18:11:6f:45 Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif default XX.XX.159.254 UGS 0 0 bge0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 0 0 lo0 XX.XX.158/23 link#1 UC 0 0 bge0 XX.XX.158.1 00:17:f2:93:01:30 UHLW 1 14 bge0 XX.XX.159.254 00:04:76:19:03:de UHLW 2 0 bge0 XX.XX.248/24 link#6 UC 0 0 bge5 Now, if I ping XX.XX.248.254 from machine #1, I get "Sendto: Host is down". The ARP table looks like this: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx.de (XX.XX.248.254) at (incomplete) on bge5 [ethernet] This goes on indefinitely. I can then do "ifconfig bge5 promisc" on ANY of the two machines (e.g. I can even do it on machine #2, or I can do it on machine #1!) and about 10 seconds later, the ARP table on machine #1 gets completed and from then on, the network connection will work normally, even if I do "ifconfig bge5 -promisc" after that. I can even delete the arp table entries on both machines, but they will be reinstated as soon as I issue the next ping. I need to reboot to trigger the strange behaviour again. I have already tried to use a different switch and have also tried using a crosslink cable. Both show the same behaviour. This is a vanilla install of 6.2-RELEASE. No firewalling of any sort is enabled yet. The only thing I did is add "option BRIDGE" to the kernel config on machine #1 and build a custom kernel (i.e. my kernel config on machine #1 only differs from GENERIC in that one line. Machine #2 still has the binary kernel from CD.) Am I overlooking something or is this a bug? What should I do next? I am not going to run the machines in the particular configuration described above, but I am now worried that there might be a bug in the "bge" driver and that I should not put these machines in production at all, at least not with FreeBSD. Regards Tobias -- Universität Stuttgart|Fakultät für Architektur und Stadtplanung|casinoIT 70174 Stuttgart Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 24D T +49 (0)711 121-4228 F +49 (0)711 121-4276 E [EMAIL PROTECTED] I http://www.casino.uni-stuttgart.de _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"