Intel PCI Gbps Ethernet Won't Come Up

[bretberger]

Dell Dimension E521 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core w/8GB. Current Version: NAS4Free 10.2.0.2 (2545) x64-embedded. On board ethernet card works fine. Intel PRO/1000 MT Single Port Gigabit Ethernet NIC Card PCI is recognized by BIOS and NAS4Free sees it as em0. Not able to bring up networking with the Intel card. Latest BIOS installed. I am certain it works with FreeBSD as I have an identical setup I just built a pfSense router with and the Intel card is working. Previous to installing pfSense I attempted to bring up the card under NAS4Free on this other box and saw the same behavior. No cabling issues. Any thoughts?

[Jack Foobar]

What does "Latest BIOS installed" mean. Are you talking about the Intel 20.7.1 bootutil/eeupdate BootIMG.FLB?

Combo Image Version Name 1.1313.0

Combo Rules v4.21.00
Clp-Loader Option ROM v3.0.58
40G Interface Module v1.0.28
iSCSI Option ROM v3.0.84
iSCSI Setup Option ROM v3.0.84
FCoE Option ROM v1.8.28
Intel(R) Boot Agent FE v4.2.08
Intel(R) Boot Agent GE v1.5.78
Intel(R) Boot Agent XE v2.3.64
Intel(R) Boot Agent I40E v1.0.31
Intel(R) Boot Agent CL v0.1.06
UEFI x64 PCI gigabit driver v3.5.22
UEFI x64 PCI-E gigabit driver v7.0.06
UEFI x64 10 gigabit driver v5.2.05
UEFI x64 40 gigabit driver v1.6.20
UEFI IA64 PCI gigabit driver v3.5.22
UEFI IA64 PCI-E gigabit driver v7.0.06
UEFI IA64 10 gigabit driver v5.2.05
UEFI IA64 40 gigabit driver v1.6.20
OCD Option ROM v0.9.03
UEFI x64 FCoE Driver v1.2.21

[bretberger]

Latest Dell motherboard BIOS for the Dell e521.

[Jack Foobar]

It does work with freebsd, as you stated. It's detected. So, what does 'not able to bring up networking' mean. I know you can configure the network, because the module is active(em driver). So, does that mean you don't know how to put in the IP address, or you do know how and you get no tone because your POS router is holding your MAC/IP(and you can't have two of those on the same network). Be more descriptive or else it's going to take a month to figure out what you're talking about.

[bretberger]

I have not attempted to enable both cards at once... I need only one Ethernet interface. The onboard Ethernet is 100Mbps, I would prefer to use the faster Gigabit PCI card. When configuring the LAN interface from the console only the onboard interface --bfe0-- shows as "UP" when connected to a live Ethernet switch. The add in card --em0-- never shows as being "UP" when "1. Configure Network Interfaces" is selected from the Console Menu while the card is connected to a live Ethernet switch. This same behavior was observed with a known good Ethernet card and identical motherboard which is functioning perfectly as the pfSense firewall/router I am now online with. This is what I mean by "not being able to bring up networking."

[bretberger]

I will also mention that I have tried disabling the onboard Ethernet in the Dell BIOS and find the results to be the same, the add in Intel PCI Ethernet card shows up as em0 but does not indicate "UP" in the console "1. Configure Network Interfaces" menu (this while connected to a live switch with known good cabling)

[bretberger]

One more observation -- the LEDs on the Intel PCI Ethernet card RJ-45 connector do not come on at any point.

[helli]

Hi! What Switch is it? There are some ugly devices on the market....just to be sure.
Or maybe it is a managed switch and some things are not well configured....
Did you also try another Switch (manufacturer), Port of Switch, or a direct client connected via crosslink cable?

[bretberger]

Woah @helli, now we're cookin' with gas. A crossover cable connected directly to a laptop brings the link light on the Ethernet card on and em0 shows "UP" on the console menu. No luck, however, with the switch (Procurve J9450A - never touched config) or an old Netgear hub using either crossover or regular patch cables.

[bretberger]

Sniffing through /var/log/system.log I see a bunch of messages concerning em0 bouncing between link state UP and DOWN every second interspersed with "/etc/rc.d/dhclient quietstart em0" executions.

[armandh]

possible bad cable

100T uses 2 pair; Gb all 4 pair

[Parkcomm]

You should configure the card with static addresses while you are fault finding.

When you plug into the procurve do the lights come up on the switch?
What does the procurve management interface say (Status > Port Summary)?

Here's mine (and I notice that port 5 has fallen back to 100Mbps, I'll have to check that out)


Can you provide the output of ifconfig?
Have you tried the crossover cable with the switch? (I believe the procurve handles crossover cable but I could be wrong)

If the switch is functioning correctly but doesn't work, and the lap top does I'm thinking media mismatch, possibly autosensing is not working (or is switched off) and you have a 1G port on the switch and 100BaseT on the server.

Could be a cable fault (as armandh said), a config fault on either end or a hardware fault.

[helli]

Ok, a link to the laptop is good. Did you try a new cable, directly from the nic to the switch?
I have already had some problems with network sockets that were not fully linked in the past, so some
devices have problems if there is only 100Mbit (wires 1-2-3-6) available, but the nic and the switch could
go at 1000Mbit. The link will not come up, it tries and failes at 1000 all the time, just as you said.
Just to be sure, try this, if not already done. And maybe fix the link speed to 1Gbps at the switch, if it supports it.

[bretberger]

Looking at Procurve J9450A management interface:

1) Crossover cable connected from NAS4Free Intel PRO/1000 Gbps Ethernet card to switch port 12: Port Status Down
2) Freshly unwrapped CAT5e patch cable from NAS4Free Intel PRO/1000 Gbps Ethernet card to switch port 12: Port Status Down
3) Freshly unwrapped CAT5e patch cable from NAS4Free onboard Ethernet port to switch port 12: Port Status UP, Link Speed 100MbpsFullDuplex
4) Freshly unwrapped CAT5e patch cable from laptop Ethernet port to switch port 12: Port Status UP, Link Speed 100MbpsFullDuplex

At no point in experiments 1 or 2 did either of the LEDs on the Intel PRO/1000 card illuminate.

5) Connected laptop Ethernet port to Intel PRO/1000 with freshly unwrapped CAT5e patch cable. Set laptop static IP to 192.168.1.200. Setup em0 (Intel PRO/1000) port to 192.168.1.125 via NAS4Free console. Both LEDs on the Intel PRO/1000 flash green for about 8 seconds then the speed LED goes out and the Activity/Link LED flashes green. Running the following in Win10 cmd line gives:

C:\Users\Bret>wmic NIC where NetEnabled=true get Name, Speed
Name Speed
Qualcomm Atheros AR8172/8176/8178 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30) 100000000

Attempts to ping the NAS4Free box and access management interface at 192.168.1.125 are not successful.

Here is link to Intel PRO/1000 LED status light decoding: ftp://www.supermicro.com/CDR-APLUS_1.12 ... lights.htm

6) Same as experiment 5 but with crossover cable. Same results.

I'm not a BSD guy but this smells like a networking module being passed wrong arguments. But.... what do I know? Thanks to everyone for their advice so far.

[bretberger]

@ParkComm here is output of ifconfig (obtained from Web management interface of NAS4Free being accessed via the onboard 100Mbps Ethernet port):
--
$ ifconfig
bfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=80008<VLAN_MTU,LINKSTATE>
ether 00:1a:a0:3e:6e:3c
inet 192.168.1.125 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
status: active
em0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC>
ether 00:0e:0c:72:64:51
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: no carrier
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

[bretberger]

OK @ParkComm, this is interesting. I am connected to the web management interface of NAS4Free via the onboard Ethernet port (bfe0). I have connected the Intel PRO/1000 Ethernet card (em0) to the laptop with a fresh CAT5e patch cable. Here is the output from ifconfig:
--
$ ifconfig
bfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=80008<VLAN_MTU,LINKSTATE>
ether 00:1a:a0:3e:6e:3c
inet 192.168.1.125 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
status: active
em0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC>
ether 00:0e:0c:72:64:51
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (10baseT/UTP <full-duplex>)
status: active
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

[Parkcomm]

the ifconfig is helpful - ruled out things like misconfigured vlans

So the connection to the laptop is 10baseT UTP - ifconfig says it and the LEDs agree. If the cables are new and the distances are short, I'd say this is a hardware problem on the NIC.

I don't know why the laptop is working (at 10Meg) but the switch isn't, but on the procurve port switch you could try configuring
Switching ► Port Configuration ►Link Speed ►10FDX and see if therre are any signs of life.

Also try configuring matching speeds on each end at other speeds

[Parkcomm]

the ifconfig is helpful - ruled out things like misconfigured vlans

So the connection to the laptop is 10baseT UTP - ifconfig says it and the LEDs agree. If the cables are new and the distances are short, I'd say this is a hardware problem on the NIC.

I don't know why the laptop is working (at 10Meg) but the switch isn't, but on the procurve port switch you could try configuring
Switching ► Port Configuration ►Link Speed ►10FDX and see if there are any signs of life.

Also try configuring matching speeds on each end at other speeds:
Nas4free | Network|LAN Management
Procurve | Switching ► Port Configuration

[bretberger]

Thanks for quick feedback @ParkComm. Tested the card in a Dell T5500 under Win7. I think it is bad. Just bought a new one on eBay from Hong Kong. Will check back in with results in a week or two after it arrives.

[bretberger]

Thanks to those that helped. Am embarrassed to say it was a bad Ethernet card. New card arrived and all is well.