[iyonix-support] Re: EtherK not starting up reliably

Hi Peter

In message <44CC0F7D.6070300@xxxxxxx>
          James Byrne <jbyrne@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Peter Bell wrote:
> > My Iyo has been running perfectly well for over three and a half years.
> > 
> > In the last week, the ethernet interface has been failing to start up
> > properly in the morning when I power the machine up - no lights on the
> > switch (a Netgear Gigabit device), and no connectivity (mail fetch or
> > ping).
> > 
> > I get the following from EKInfo when the system is in this state:
> > 
> > : *ekinfo
> > : EtherK device driver for Intel PRO/1000 network controllers, version 0.19
> > : DCI Version 4.05
> > : Supported network cards detected: 1
> > : 
> > : Unit 0 (location: Motherboard)
> > :   Ethernet address 00:09:95:00:11:00
> > :   Link is up; 1000 Mbps Full Duplex

is your switch a gigabit one?



> > :   Controller mode: Multicast, reject frames with errors
> > : 
> > :   Frame types claimed:
> > :     Ethernet 0800    (multicast)   handler=(FC2E6610,FB407414)
> > :     Ethernet 0806    (normal)      handler=(FC2E6610,FB407414)
> > :     Ethernet 8035    (normal)      handler=(FC2E6610,FB407414)
> > : 
> > :   Hardware statistics summary:
> > :     TX frames 169    : RX frames 302
> > :     TX bytes  19,088 : RX bytes  44,649
> > :     TX errors 0      : RX errors 0
> > : 
> > :   Driver statistics (only non-zero statistics are reported):
> > :     Frames received: 302
> > :     Unwanted frames: 27
> > 
> > I'm puzzled at the hardware statistics, showing both TX and RX activity,
> > when I appear to have no connectivity.
> > 
> > A *rmreinit etherk gets everything up and running.

what speed does that then show?

and also, as James asked, what effect does resetting the switch or
disconnecting/reconnecting the network cable have?


> > 
> > Is this a sign of the psu starting to go out of spec?

I also think unlikely.. but a quick check of the psu with a dmm might
be illuminationg .. basically a 5v rail (red to black on a spare hdd
connector) which shows less than 5.04v would suggest a power supply
that is no longer behaving as it did when shipped.

John

> 
> Unlikely, the symptom you get in that case is that EtherK fails to 
> detect the Ethernet chip on the motherboard, which is not happening in 
> this case.
> 
> > or...
> > 
> > Is it a sign of a problem with the switch?  Although all other
> > ports appear to be working okay, perhaps I should try rebooting that
> > next time.
> 
> Yes, probably a good idea to try resetting the switch. The EtherK output 
> in your mail shows that as far as EtherK is concerned everything is OK. 
> The link is up, it's been detected as 1000BaseT, and the driver is 
> transmitting and receiving packets with no errors.
> 
> As well as resetting the switch, I'd suggest swapping the Ethernet cable 
> in case it's faulty - sometimes it's the simple things that go wrong. If 
> you're convinced that the switch and cable are OK, try "*EKInfo -v" and 
> look at some of the more obscure statistics to see if they give any 
> hints of something amiss - the EtherK user guide file (which should be 
> somewhere on your hard disc) explains what they mean (to an extent). If 
> that doesn't get you anywhere, try forcing the link speed to 100M and 
> see if that helps.
> 
> James
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-- 
John Ballance
jwb@xxxxxxxxxx
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