Hi,

I have a group of Allied Telesyn AT-2700 NICs using SC optical fiber (so it is using Full Duplex, and as far as I know is only CAPABLE of being 100BaseFX). This is connected to a CISCO 3550 switch that is forced to 100BaseFX-Full Duplex with port-fast on or off (the problem exists in both modes of port-fast). This problem doesn't exist on the WinTel's, as they pop straight back up so implies it might not be the switch or cards but a linux driver problem...

The problem is that once unplugged under RedHat Enterprise, RedHat download, Fedora, Debian or SuSE they will not come back up again when plugging back in. Watching the comms with "mii-tool -w" gives the connection at the expected "100BaseTx-FD, link ok" from boot, shows the link fall over once unplugged at "100BaseTx-FD, link down", then attempting to get back to the switch for a few seconds at "100BaseTx-FD, link ok" and then falls into a heap and sits on 10BaseT-HD!?? 10Base HALF!? HUH? "Link ok", eh?

The connection can be regained with mii-tool forcing the NIC back to 100BaseTx-FD and sometimes needing an ifdown+ifup+mii-tool --force but it returns eventually.

Now I know that the PCnet32 driver is coming in with the base kernel, which is automatically compiled into the kernel. The Allied Telesyn instructions suggest removing the pcnet32 driver from the modules.conf file! and adding an alias to their driver--- BUT how do I do THAT when it's in the base kernel (it obviously doesnt have an "alias eth0 pcnet32" entry in the modules.conf file).

Can I pass an option to force the pcnet32 driver to not come up or do I HAVE to recompile? I've compiled the AT-2700 'atnic32' driver as a module and added it to the modules.conf file as suggested, but I know this will not work when the pcnet32 driver has already picked it up earlier in the boot...

So basically I need to know...

1) Why is the mii-tool calling it 100BaseTx and not 100BaseFX? which is what optical is?

2) Is it a driver issue? or maybe duplexing at the switch?

3) How can I remove pcnet32 from the kernel without recompiling, is there a string I can pass in the boot parameters (maybe in lilo) of the kernel to force the pcnet32 to not come up?

4) Do I have to recompile?.. No, reeaaally?

Thanks,
bloke!

Hello

I have the same problem, when I unplug the fiber and inserts it again, the link never comes up. Have you found the solution to this?

Thanks