On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 08:30:17PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote: > On Wednesday 27 February 2008, John Morrissey wrote: > > These interfaces take a while to negotiate a link, probably because > > spanning tree is enabled on the switch ports they're attached to, so it > > necessarily takes a while for the port to enter the forwarding state. Is > > there a way to have d-i/netcfg sleep for a longer (configurable?) period > > of time before assuming no link has been negotiated? > > OK. One way to test this theory would be to run an installation with > 'install priority=medium' and wait for some time between the network > hardware detection step and the network configuration step. > And maybe check dmesg or VT4 in between for link detection messages. > > Does that result in reliable automatic selection of the connected NIC? > > If it does, how long is the delay between the driver being loaded and the > link coming up (/var/log/syslog should be able to tell you)?
According to the switch, the link comes up when the machine boots (we PXE boot for our installs), ascends to spanning-tree listening state, and remains up when d-i starts. When the module for the interfaces is loaded, the link stays up (on the switch side; d-i syslogs don't indicate anything about link, and ifconfig(8) shows them as down: i.e., they do not appear in 'ifconfig' output, but do appear in 'ifconfig -a' as 'BROADCAST MULTICAST' and not 'UP' or 'RUNNING'). When I hit 'Configure network interfaces,' netcfg must throb the interface somehow, since it goes from forwarding state to listening state on the switch: sw06.roch.ny#sh int g0/31 GigabitEthernet0/31 is up, line protocol is up (connected) [...] sw06.roch.ny#sh spanning-tree interface g0/31 Vlan Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type ---------------- ---- --- --------- -------- -------------------------------- VLAN0090 Desg FWD 4 128.31 P2p [... select 'Configure Network Interfaces'] sw06.roch.ny#sh spanning-tree interface g0/31 Vlan Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type ---------------- ---- --- --------- -------- -------------------------------- VLAN0090 Desg LIS 19 128.31 P2p [... time goes by] sw06.roch.ny#sh spanning-tree interface g0/31 Vlan Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type ---------------- ---- --- --------- -------- -------------------------------- VLAN0090 Desg FWD 4 128.31 P2p The interface list does not indicate that either interface has link, and the syslogs say: main-menu[1188]: INFO: Menu item 'netcfg' selected kernel: bnx2: eth0: using MSI netcfg[2842]: INFO: eth0 is disconnected. (MII) netcfg[2842]: INFO: eth0 is not a wireless interface. Continuing. Once I choose to use DHCP on the interface, dhclient starts and, two seconds later, the kernel shows that the device has link: kernel: bnx2: eth0: using MSI kernel: bnx2: eth0 NIC Link is Up, 1000Mbps full duplex However, something has again booted the switch port back into spanning-tree listening state and the port must again ascend to forwarding state. Because of this, dhclient spins for a while and successfully gets an IP address 37 seconds after link is detected by the kernel. I don't know what the default timeout is OTTOMH, but without overriding it, network autoconfiguration fails every time. john -- John Morrissey _o /\ ---- __o [EMAIL PROTECTED] _-< \_ / \ ---- < \, www.horde.net/ __(_)/_(_)________/ \_______(_) /_(_)__ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
