Subject: Re: tg3 issues

From: patric <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:59:03 +0200

Michael Chan wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 15:24 +0200, patric wrote:
>
>   
>> Just a hypothetical question. If the 2 network cards starts the 
>> autonegotiation would it be possible that they get into a loop where 
>> they are chasing each others state?  Maybe a fix could be to add a sleep 
>> of a random length that would enable them to catch up? Maybe you know if 
>> any of the fiber-cards so support running without flowcontrol too since 
>> the cards don't seem to be able to get a link with flowcontrol turned 
>> off at least in this setup.
>>
>>
>>     
>
> The old 5701 fiber NICs do not support autonegotiation in hardware so it
> is done "by hand" in the driver.  It is not the most robust way of doing
> autoneg and what you described is totally possible.  You might want to
> try disabling autoneg to see if it works any better.  There is only one
> possible speed in fiber and autoneg is really only used to negotiate
> flow control.  Some switch ports will not link up if the link partner
> does not do autoneg though.
>
> You have to use ethtool in initrd to turn off autoneg or just modify the
> driver to disable autoneg.
>
>
>   
Thanks... That's a confirmation on what i  suspected.. I think i'll dig 
into the code instead and try to figure out some way of making it work a 
bit better for my setup atleast...
I'll post a patch later if i get something working... Btw, do you have 
any timings on how long it takes for the cards to get a lock on the link?

Thanks for your input!

/Patric