With RH 7.3 how does the machine know how to configure the NIC card at boot up.

I have a 10/100/1000 NIC card and seems to auto configure the communications speed at boot time. For example if connected to 10baseT hub it reports 10 half duplex at boot up but if moved to a 100baseT switch it reports 100 full duplex.

Is this managed via an init.d script or is it managed elsewhere. I know on some *nix's you can force it to configure at a given speed.

this behavior is the default behavior . If you need to hard code the connection speed or duplex.. the method is dependent on the driver that the card uses.

For example:

Assuming we are using the eepro100 driver you need to make the following entries in /etc/modules.conf

alias eth0 eepro100
options eepro100 options=0x30

The various options are:
Hex Decimal Meaning
0x10 16 Force Full-Duplex operation (must be used with 0x20 or 0x40)
0x20 32 Force 100mbps-only operation
0x30 48 Force 100mbps-only with Full Duplex
0x40 64 Force 10mbps-only
0x50 80 Force 10mpps-only with Full Duplex

This information for a particular driver can usually be found in the doucmentation for that driver.

Someone told me there is a utilty available from Scyld.com called "mii-diag" but I have never seen or used it.

-KevinJ

Thanks.

You can try mii-tool which is installed on RedHat 8.0 (I can't remember if it's on any of the earlier dists though...)

[root@dcssl-smg-webids02 rohang]# mii-tool --help
usage: mii-tool [-VvRrwl] [-A media,... | -F media] [interface ...]
-V, --version display version information
-v, --verbose more verbose output
-R, --reset reset MII to poweron state
-r, --restart restart autonegotiation
-w, --watch monitor for link status changes
-l, --log with -w, write events to syslog
-A, --advertise=media,... advertise only specified media
-F, --force=media force specified media technology
media: 100baseT4, 100baseTx-FD, 100baseTx-HD, 10baseT-FD, 10baseT-HD,
(to advertise both HD and FD) 100baseTx, 10baseT