Hey folks,

I recently re-installed RedHat 9.0 on a Dell Dimension 4400 that I use as a test webserver of sorts.

Since the reinstall, the network card refuses to work in full duplex mode (I think).

After the reinstall I attempted to copy a number of large files that I moved before erasing the drive and reinstalling RedHat. The files were moved to an OS X machine. When I attempted to move them back, simply using sftp in a terminal window, the transfer time was painfully slow. Like 2k/second slow.

The computers are connected to a 10/100base-T Linksys switch. I have yellow full-duplex lights for both my G5, my G4 laptop, and the printer, but not for the Linux box. I've swapped cables, ports, etc. And again, all of this was fine before the reinstall.

I modified the modules.conf file where it listed:
alias eth0 3c59x

And changed it to:
alias eth0 3c59x full_duplex=1

And that didn't help.

I don't understand what could have changed--the last installation was RedHat 9 as well, and I pretty much did a default installation.

Of course, I'm still able to download files (like php, mysql, etc.) from the internet at 300k a second, and I would have thought being half-duplex would have prevented that, but maybe I just don't understand networking as well as I thought I do....

Thanks in advance for any help and ideas.

G.--

Just in case someone might benefit from this down the road.

I received an answer to my question from the folks at the scyld.com vortex listserv.

Here's what I did:

vortex-diag -F Autonegotiation -w

After rebooting (turning off the ETH service and restarting should work too) the yellow light on the switch turned on, and I was able to then copy files at over 10 mbit/sec, which is wonderful.

G.--