Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-22 Thread Mike Hunter
On Aug 19 at 11:50, "Paul Koch" wrote:

> The second problem we found was, various NICs would report that they 
> were "active" after doing auto negotiation, but no rx packets were 
> being passed into to the OS.  Not sure if it was a hardware or driver 
> issue, but we discovered that by forcing a packet out the NIC via the 
> bpf interface, it would immediately start doing stuff.  It was if the 
> auto negotiation had not really completed fully until a packet was 
> transmitted.  This only occurred on certain types of NICs, the newer 
> ones.  This was a problem for us because we build something called 
> a "remote network appliance" (RNA) which is basically FreeBSD on a 
> floppy and runs a statistical lan analyser.  The RNA might have many 
> NICs in it, one with an IP, the others just connected to network 
> segments in promiscuous mode.  Our apps couldn't monitor any traffic 
> because no packets had be sent out the interfaces.  So, early in the 
> boot process we force out a couple of "Loopback" packets and everything 
> works just fine.
> 
> Not sure if the second issue would be a problem for normal installations 
> though.

I have a feeling this is related to windows; I recently watched a windows
server boot with ethereal and it did an "arp x.x.x.x is-at a:b:c:d:e:f"
(or 2 or 3) first thing (it had a static IP)...so of course a nic vendor
would never realize there's a problem since they only test with
windows*sigh*.  Not sure how DHCP would play into that.
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Jo Rhett
On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 02:00:06PM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:
> This is a little off-topic (and I'm no Cisco specialist) but I'm
> afraid that the loop detection won't happen with portfast. Cisco.com
> says (the first page that Google gave me):
 
I've deleted the cisco verbage for brevity, but that doesn't mean loops
won't be detected.  It means that it will behave like any STP port in
forwarding state -- forward packets until it detects a loop.

The "problem" is that if you were to link the networks together using
portfast ports then it could take 5-20 seconds for the switch to get a
clue.  (I've never seen it take longer if enough traffic to create a
problem was transiting the port)

-- 
Jo Rhett
senior geek
SVcolo : Silicon Valley Colocation
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Paul Koch
On Saturday 19 August 2006 03:12, Alan Amesbury wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback and discussion!  Alas, in terms of network
> configuration, I'm just a tenant; I have no direct control over the
> networking gear, nor direct visibility into how the switch is
> configured.
>
> A couple people wrote to me directly and suggested I 'send-pr' this,
> so I'll do so (hopefully later today).
>
> Thanks again!
>
>
> --
> Alan Amesbury
> University of Minnesota


This is a really old problem, actually two.

The first being the spanning tree problem where it can take a "long" 
time for it to settle and your port go into forwarding state.  Adding a 
random sleep doesn't help because - how long do you sleep for ?  How we 
got around this problem at various sites was, by modifying rc scripts, 
to check if a default gateway was configured (typical), and ping it 
until a response was received, or a large timeout occurred (eg. 5 
minutes).  That way, all other network services like nptdate, and 
sendmail would have a better chance of working.

If your machine doesn't use a static IP, but instead dhcp, then you will 
need to have a long timeout/retry on the dhcp requests.

The second problem we found was, various NICs would report that they 
were "active" after doing auto negotiation, but no rx packets were 
being passed into to the OS.  Not sure if it was a hardware or driver 
issue, but we discovered that by forcing a packet out the NIC via the 
bpf interface, it would immediately start doing stuff.  It was if the 
auto negotiation had not really completed fully until a packet was 
transmitted.  This only occurred on certain types of NICs, the newer 
ones.  This was a problem for us because we build something called 
a "remote network appliance" (RNA) which is basically FreeBSD on a 
floppy and runs a statistical lan analyser.  The RNA might have many 
NICs in it, one with an IP, the others just connected to network 
segments in promiscuous mode.  Our apps couldn't monitor any traffic 
because no packets had be sent out the interfaces.  So, early in the 
boot process we force out a couple of "Loopback" packets and everything 
works just fine.

Not sure if the second issue would be a problem for normal installations 
though.

Paul.
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Alan Amesbury
Thanks for the feedback and discussion!  Alas, in terms of network
configuration, I'm just a tenant; I have no direct control over the
networking gear, nor direct visibility into how the switch is configured.

A couple people wrote to me directly and suggested I 'send-pr' this, so
I'll do so (hopefully later today).

Thanks again!


--
Alan Amesbury
University of Minnesota
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Vivek Khera


On Aug 17, 2006, at 9:49 PM, Alan Amesbury wrote:


adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf



I'm not sure how much to believe the dell docs... on a PE800, they  
claim the system has a BCM5721 chip, which is how it was coded into  
the bge driver when I first got this machine and helped get patches  
built for it.  However, the pciconf database claims it is a  
"BCM5750A1".  Which one is correct?  I suspect the latter.


I have PR's open on resolving this inconsistency, but they are  
obviously low priority.


I have no problems with the delay in the 'active' status, but I hard- 
code IP configuration since it is a server.




Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Patrick M. Hausen
Hi!

> This is a little off-topic (and I'm no Cisco specialist) but I'm
> afraid that the loop detection won't happen with portfast. Cisco.com
> says (the first page that Google gave me):

> [ Cisco documentation ]

As always: it depends. In this case, what you imply by "loop detection".
If the loop is built using more Cisco equipment participating in STP,
then the loop will be detected and eventually broken by putting one
of the links in blocked state. IOS or CatOS bugs notwithstanding.

Regards,

Patrick M. Hausen
Leiter Netzwerke und Sicherheit
-- 
punkt.de GmbH Internet - Dienstleistungen - Beratung
Vorholzstr. 25Tel. 0721 9109 -0 Fax: -100
76137 Karlsruhe   http://punkt.de
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Danny Braniss
> 2006/8/18, Patrick M. Hausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 01:23:15PM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:
> >
> > > Unfortunately, I don't know how it works exactly. In our case when the
> > > autodetection is disabled and there is e.g. 100/full configured
> > > manually on both, switch and the FreeBSD box, ifconfig shows the
> > > interface status wery early as "active". I suspect the switch (Cisco)
> > > to activate the port (from the point of view of the FreeBSD box) but
> > > not to forward any "normal" frames until the Spanning Tree Protocol
> > > procedure is finished for that port. But it's just a guess. I don't
> > > know the negotiation protocol in Ethernet at all and I would really
> > > welcome a commentary from someone who does.
> >
> > This is indeed the case.
> >
> > The switch port goes up. Then the port goes into either the forwarding
> > or the blocking state. The transition period usually takes between 30
> > and 50 seconds, which may be to long for some devices.
> >
> > spanning-tree portfast puts the port into the forwarding state
> > immediately but still participates in STP, so eventually a loop
> > will be detected and the port put back into blocking state again.
> 
> This is a little off-topic (and I'm no Cisco specialist) but I'm
> afraid that the loop detection won't happen with portfast. Cisco.com
> says (the first page that Google gave me):
> 
> ---
> Understanding How PortFast Works
> 
> Spanning-tree PortFast causes a port to enter the spanning-tree
> forwarding state immediately, bypassing the listening and learning
> states. You can use PortFast on switch ports connected to a single
> workstation or server to allow those devices to connect to the network
> immediately, rather than waiting for the port to transition from the
> listening and learning states to the forwarding state.
> 
> Caution: PortFast should be used only when connecting a single end
> station to a switch port. If you enable PortFast on a port connected
> to another networking device, such as a switch, you can create network
> loops.
> 
> When the switch powers up, or when a device is connected to a port,
> the port normally enters the spanning-tree listening state. When the
> forward delay timer expires, the port enters the learning state. When
> the forward delay timer expires a second time, the port is
> transitioned to the forwarding or blocking state.
> 
> When you enable PortFast on a port, the port is immediately and
> permanently transitioned to the spanning-tree forwarding state.
> ---
> 
> But then I don't see any difference between using portfast and
> disabling Spanning Tree Protocol frames for that port at all. :-/
> 
because there isn't?

if you are connecting a host to a switch,  you can safely drop Spanning tree.
from experience, even with SP enabled, the loop is detected, but not always
the correct port is disabled :-(.

danny

> Martin
> 
> 
> > The layer 2 interface is, of course, "up" during all this
> > mumble - otherwise the switch could not send & receive STP frames.
> > This is what confuses hosts waiting for DHCP or similar.


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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Martin Horcicka

2006/8/18, Patrick M. Hausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 01:23:15PM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:

> Unfortunately, I don't know how it works exactly. In our case when the
> autodetection is disabled and there is e.g. 100/full configured
> manually on both, switch and the FreeBSD box, ifconfig shows the
> interface status wery early as "active". I suspect the switch (Cisco)
> to activate the port (from the point of view of the FreeBSD box) but
> not to forward any "normal" frames until the Spanning Tree Protocol
> procedure is finished for that port. But it's just a guess. I don't
> know the negotiation protocol in Ethernet at all and I would really
> welcome a commentary from someone who does.

This is indeed the case.

The switch port goes up. Then the port goes into either the forwarding
or the blocking state. The transition period usually takes between 30
and 50 seconds, which may be to long for some devices.

spanning-tree portfast puts the port into the forwarding state
immediately but still participates in STP, so eventually a loop
will be detected and the port put back into blocking state again.


This is a little off-topic (and I'm no Cisco specialist) but I'm
afraid that the loop detection won't happen with portfast. Cisco.com
says (the first page that Google gave me):

---
Understanding How PortFast Works

Spanning-tree PortFast causes a port to enter the spanning-tree
forwarding state immediately, bypassing the listening and learning
states. You can use PortFast on switch ports connected to a single
workstation or server to allow those devices to connect to the network
immediately, rather than waiting for the port to transition from the
listening and learning states to the forwarding state.

Caution: PortFast should be used only when connecting a single end
station to a switch port. If you enable PortFast on a port connected
to another networking device, such as a switch, you can create network
loops.

When the switch powers up, or when a device is connected to a port,
the port normally enters the spanning-tree listening state. When the
forward delay timer expires, the port enters the learning state. When
the forward delay timer expires a second time, the port is
transitioned to the forwarding or blocking state.

When you enable PortFast on a port, the port is immediately and
permanently transitioned to the spanning-tree forwarding state.
---

But then I don't see any difference between using portfast and
disabling Spanning Tree Protocol frames for that port at all. :-/

Martin



The layer 2 interface is, of course, "up" during all this
mumble - otherwise the switch could not send & receive STP frames.
This is what confuses hosts waiting for DHCP or similar.

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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Patrick M. Hausen
Hi, all!

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 01:23:15PM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:

> Unfortunately, I don't know how it works exactly. In our case when the
> autodetection is disabled and there is e.g. 100/full configured
> manually on both, switch and the FreeBSD box, ifconfig shows the
> interface status wery early as "active". I suspect the switch (Cisco)
> to activate the port (from the point of view of the FreeBSD box) but
> not to forward any "normal" frames until the Spanning Tree Protocol
> procedure is finished for that port. But it's just a guess. I don't
> know the negotiation protocol in Ethernet at all and I would really
> welcome a commentary from someone who does.

This is indeed the case.

The switch port goes up. Then the port goes into either the forwarding
or the blocking state. The transition period usually takes between 30
and 50 seconds, which may be to long for some devices.

spanning-tree portfast puts the port into the forwarding state
immediately but still participates in STP, so eventually a loop
will be detected and the port put back into blocking state again.

The layer 2 interface is, of course, "up" during all this
mumble - otherwise the switch could not send & receive STP frames.
This is what confuses hosts waiting for DHCP or similar.

HTH,

Patrick M. Hausen
Leiter Netzwerke und Sicherheit
-- 
punkt.de GmbH Internet - Dienstleistungen - Beratung
Vorholzstr. 25Tel. 0721 9109 -0 Fax: -100
76137 Karlsruhe   http://punkt.de
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Martin Horcicka

2006/8/18, Pyun YongHyeon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 10:51:07AM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:
 > 2006/8/18, Dan Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
 > >In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
 > >> OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
 > >> FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
 > >> reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
 > >> adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
 > >> FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
 > >> actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See
 > >>
 > >> http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf
 > >>
 > >> for details.  The switch to which the host is connected is a Cisco
 > >> Catalyst 3750.  How this relates to FreeBSD, however.
 > >
 > >Have you enabled portfast on the Cisco?
 > >
 > >http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html#c2k
 >
 > We have similar problems on various hardware and we also believe it's
 > caused by the Spanning Tree Protocol procedure done during the switch
 > port initialization. I don't like the idea of using portfast as it
 > makes the switch less robust so I tried to delay the boot using an rc
 > script as well:

...

I think it's job of device driver. If the driver find its link
negotiation is in progress it should not send frames.
Unfortunately not all drivers handle this correctly.


Unfortunately, I don't know how it works exactly. In our case when the
autodetection is disabled and there is e.g. 100/full configured
manually on both, switch and the FreeBSD box, ifconfig shows the
interface status wery early as "active". I suspect the switch (Cisco)
to activate the port (from the point of view of the FreeBSD box) but
not to forward any "normal" frames until the Spanning Tree Protocol
procedure is finished for that port. But it's just a guess. I don't
know the negotiation protocol in Ethernet at all and I would really
welcome a commentary from someone who does.

Martin
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Ruslan Ermilov
On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 06:22:56PM +0900, Pyun YongHyeon wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 10:51:07AM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:
>  > 2006/8/18, Dan Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>  > >In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
>  > >> OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
>  > >> FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
>  > >> reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
>  > >> adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
[...]

>  > It's a little hack but it works as expected. Anyway, in some cases it
>  > does not help. The NIC is probably reset at some later point. I have
>  > not investigated it further yet.
>  > 
>  > >Another thing to check is whether you have alias IPs.  I believe the
>  > >bge driver has to reset the card every time you add or remove an IP.
>  > >I know the ti driver (whose chipset the broadcom chips are based on)
>  > >had that problem.
>  > 
>  > Yes, but I believe that all such operations are done by the netif script.
>  > 
> 
> I think it's job of device driver. If the driver find its link
> negotiation is in progress it should not send frames.
> Unfortunately not all drivers handle this correctly.
> 
But the bge's start() routine does this, and did it in 6.1-RELEASE,
so it doesn't look like a problem in this particular case.

: if (!sc->bge_link || IFQ_DRV_IS_EMPTY(&ifp->if_snd))
: return;


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
FreeBSD committer


pgpxP9mBvWi35.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Pyun YongHyeon
On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 10:51:07AM +0200, Martin Horcicka wrote:
 > 2006/8/18, Dan Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
 > >In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
 > >> OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
 > >> FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
 > >> reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
 > >> adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
 > >> FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
 > >> actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See
 > >>
 > >> http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf
 > >>
 > >> for details.  The switch to which the host is connected is a Cisco
 > >> Catalyst 3750.  How this relates to FreeBSD, however.
 > >
 > >Have you enabled portfast on the Cisco?
 > >
 > >http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html#c2k
 > 
 > We have similar problems on various hardware and we also believe it's
 > caused by the Spanning Tree Protocol procedure done during the switch
 > port initialization. I don't like the idea of using portfast as it
 > makes the switch less robust so I tried to delay the boot using an rc
 > script as well:
 > 
 > /etc/rc.d/slow_interface_startup:
 > ---
 > #!/bin/sh
 > 
 > # PROVIDE: slow_interface_startup
 > # REQUIRE: netif
 > # BEFORE:  NETWORKING
 > 
 > slow_interface_startup_enable=${slow_interface_startup_enable:-NO}
 > slow_interface_startup_duration=${slow_interface_startup_duration:-50}
 > 
 > . /etc/rc.subr
 > 
 > name=slow_interface_startup
 > rcvar=`set_rcvar`
 > start_cmd=slow_interface_startup_start
 > stop_cmd=:
 > 
 > slow_interface_startup_start() {
 >  echo -n "Waiting for interfaces to get ready" \
 >  "($slow_interface_startup_duration seconds)"
 >  sleep "$slow_interface_startup_duration"
 >  echo
 > }
 > 
 > load_rc_config $name
 > run_rc_command "$1"
 > ---
 > 
 > Then you can add to rc.conf:
 > 
 >  slow_interface_startup_enable="YES"
 > 
 > And optionally also (in seconds):
 > 
 >  slow_interface_startup_duration="123"
 > 
 > It's a little hack but it works as expected. Anyway, in some cases it
 > does not help. The NIC is probably reset at some later point. I have
 > not investigated it further yet.
 > 
 > >Another thing to check is whether you have alias IPs.  I believe the
 > >bge driver has to reset the card every time you add or remove an IP.
 > >I know the ti driver (whose chipset the broadcom chips are based on)
 > >had that problem.
 > 
 > Yes, but I believe that all such operations are done by the netif script.
 > 

I think it's job of device driver. If the driver find its link
negotiation is in progress it should not send frames.
Unfortunately not all drivers handle this correctly.

-- 
Regards,
Pyun YongHyeon
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Pyun YongHyeon
On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 09:16:43PM -0500, Dan Nelson wrote:
 > In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
 > > OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
 > > FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
 > > reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
 > > adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
 > > FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
 > > actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See
 > > 
 > > http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf
 > > 
 > > for details.  The switch to which the host is connected is a Cisco
 > > Catalyst 3750.  How this relates to FreeBSD, however.
 > 
 > Have you enabled portfast on the Cisco? 
 > 
 > http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html#c2k
 > 
 > Another thing to check is whether you have alias IPs.  I believe the
 > bge driver has to reset the card every time you add or remove an IP.
 > I know the ti driver (whose chipset the broadcom chips are based on)
 > had that problem.
 > 

If there is a way to program multicasting filters correctly
without resettting the hardware there is no need to reset hardware
and it could be easily implemented in ether_ioctl().

-- 
Regards,
Pyun YongHyeon
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-18 Thread Martin Horcicka

2006/8/18, Dan Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
> OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
> FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
> reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
> adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
> FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
> actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See
>
> http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf
>
> for details.  The switch to which the host is connected is a Cisco
> Catalyst 3750.  How this relates to FreeBSD, however.

Have you enabled portfast on the Cisco?

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html#c2k


We have similar problems on various hardware and we also believe it's
caused by the Spanning Tree Protocol procedure done during the switch
port initialization. I don't like the idea of using portfast as it
makes the switch less robust so I tried to delay the boot using an rc
script as well:

/etc/rc.d/slow_interface_startup:
---
#!/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: slow_interface_startup
# REQUIRE: netif
# BEFORE:  NETWORKING

slow_interface_startup_enable=${slow_interface_startup_enable:-NO}
slow_interface_startup_duration=${slow_interface_startup_duration:-50}

. /etc/rc.subr

name=slow_interface_startup
rcvar=`set_rcvar`
start_cmd=slow_interface_startup_start
stop_cmd=:

slow_interface_startup_start() {
 echo -n "Waiting for interfaces to get ready" \
 "($slow_interface_startup_duration seconds)"
 sleep "$slow_interface_startup_duration"
 echo
}

load_rc_config $name
run_rc_command "$1"
---

Then you can add to rc.conf:

 slow_interface_startup_enable="YES"

And optionally also (in seconds):

 slow_interface_startup_duration="123"

It's a little hack but it works as expected. Anyway, in some cases it
does not help. The NIC is probably reset at some later point. I have
not investigated it further yet.


Another thing to check is whether you have alias IPs.  I believe the
bge driver has to reset the card every time you add or remove an IP.
I know the ti driver (whose chipset the broadcom chips are based on)
had that problem.


Yes, but I believe that all such operations are done by the netif script.

Martin
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Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850

2006-08-17 Thread Dan Nelson
In the last episode (Aug 17), Alan Amesbury said:
> OK, booting *too* quickly is a somewhat unusual problem.  I have
> FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 running on a Dell PowerEdge 850.  For some
> reason, in the PowerEdge 850 Dell chose to replace the perfectly
> adequate em(4) adapters found on the PE750 with bge(4) hardware.
> FreeBSD identifies these adapters as BCM5750A1, but Dell says they're
> actually Broadcom 5721J adapters instead.  See
> 
> http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/850_specs.pdf
> 
> for details.  The switch to which the host is connected is a Cisco
> Catalyst 3750.  How this relates to FreeBSD, however.

Have you enabled portfast on the Cisco? 

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html#c2k

Another thing to check is whether you have alias IPs.  I believe the
bge driver has to reset the card every time you add or remove an IP.
I know the ti driver (whose chipset the broadcom chips are based on)
had that problem.

-- 
Dan Nelson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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