Hi all,

I have a Netgear GA 311 (Gigabit Ethernet) in a Blade 1000. OS is
Solaris 10 6/06 with
all publicly available patches applied.

At boot, when the interface is initialized I get a series of log
messages as follows (further at the end) and the interface fails to
synchronize with the Hub or a Switch. I tried both with a 10/100 hub
and a 10/100 switch as I do not have yet a GBE switch (which is on its
way).

Often it ends up syncronizing in 10-60 seconds, but a couple of times
just failed to synchronize at all (I waited max 5 minutes).


The funny thing is that when I power cycle system, the leds on both the

switch and the card show that the sync is fine at 100 Mbit/s, and the
troubles start only when the interface is plumbed by the OS with the
switch giving a pulsing red light rather than a green light.

After the interface has sync'd (and if it did it) than there are no
further issues and everything works fine (until next re-boot)

Has anyone had a similar experience and now how to solve it?

HD

Aug 31 15:26:18 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:20 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:20 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:22 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:22 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:24 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:24 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:26 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:26 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:27 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:27 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:29 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:29 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:31 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:31 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:33 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:33 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:35 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:35 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:36 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
Aug 31 15:26:36 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
Aug 31 15:26:38 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex

haydude wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have a Netgear GA 311 (Gigabit Ethernet) in a Blade 1000. OS is
> Solaris 10 6/06 with
> all publicly available patches applied.
>
> At boot, when the interface is initialized I get a series of log
> messages as follows (further at the end) and the interface fails to
> synchronize with the Hub or a Switch. I tried both with a 10/100 hub
> and a 10/100 switch as I do not have yet a GBE switch (which is on its
> way).
>
> Often it ends up syncronizing in 10-60 seconds, but a couple of times
> just failed to synchronize at all (I waited max 5 minutes).
>
>
> The funny thing is that when I power cycle system, the leds on both the
>
> switch and the card show that the sync is fine at 100 Mbit/s, and the
> troubles start only when the interface is plumbed by the OS with the
> switch giving a pulsing red light rather than a green light.
>
> After the interface has sync'd (and if it did it) than there are no
> further issues and everything works fine (until next re-boot)
>
> Has anyone had a similar experience and now how to solve it?
>
> HD
>
> Aug 31 15:26:18 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:20 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:20 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:22 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:22 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:24 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:24 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:26 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:26 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:27 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:27 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:29 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:29 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:31 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:31 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:33 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:33 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:35 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:35 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:36 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
> Aug 31 15:26:36 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link down
> Aug 31 15:26:38 blade rge: NOTICE: rge0: link up 100Mbps Full_Duplex
>

Is the Netgear GA 311 supported? When you start using random bits of
third party hardware you are pretty much on your own when it doesn't work!

Since hearing of the U-Wisconsin debacle, I wouldn't buy anything from
Netgear! This is where they sold routers with a hard coded address for
a U-Wisconsin NTP server and a broken SNTP client that polled once per
second. A few hundred thousand of these boxes brought U-Wisconsin to
it's knees. Netgear was very lucky not to be sued for everything it had
or ever hoped to have!

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> Is the Netgear GA 311 supported? When you start using random bits of
> third party hardware you are pretty much on your own when it doesn't work!

I am not sure about "supported", but is is reported to work on Sparc
with Solaris 10, and in fact it does work, if it can get around the
boot.

Though I haven't heard of that local U-Wisconsin issue (I am in
Europe), I had too bad experience with recent Netgear hardware (they
used to be good until they produced inexpensive blue metal boxes), but
on Sparc I cannot be choosy, I had to go with what was reported to
work.

Still, I remember vaguely that I had a similar issue with 3rd party
network cards some 10 years ago on Sparc hardware, so this Up/Down link
at boot issue must be a known problem.

HD