Help with Intel PWLA8391GT Gigabit Card - Can't set 1000baseTX [SOLVED]

[knalley]

Hello,

I've been trying to build a freenas 8 box with an old Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with 1.5 GB or memory. The 3com and Nvidia onboard Lans were giving me trouble so after much reading, I bought an Intel Gigabit PCI card. The problem I'm having is I can't get the card set to 1000baseTX. When I enter "ifconfig em0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex" the card stops working.... so to verify, I type ifconfig -a and it reports the card as "1000baseT". My first thought was "I've made a typo" so I did it again.... same thing. I have no idea how to fix this problem... any suggestions? Just FYI, my house is wired cat 5e going through a D-Link Dir-655 gigabit router. I have a 10/100 switch I use to branch off to my TV's, etc... The port from my Desktop to my NAS are connected gigabit all the way.

 

[BobCochran]

Most network interface chipsets autosense the speed they can connect at, there is no work needed on your part. You can't make the speed faster if the router and switch and other hardware can't support those speeds. The LED lights on the physical connector will tell you what speed you are connected at. Check your documentation to find out what color and flash patterns indicate what speeds. Do you know if the D-Link router is gigabit capable? If not, your network will not run at gigabit speeds. You say you have a 10/100 switch. If that is correct, you will also never connect at gigabit speeds. You want a router and switch that are gigabit capable: 10/100/1000 Mbps. All the network adapters on the network route have to be gigabit capable, too. You need to use cable that is not broken, crushed, and so on.

My other comment is that your system is pretty low on memory -- 1.5 Gb of memory is not enough for ZFS, if you intend to use it. I think 6 Gb is a practical minimum.

Thanks

Bob Cochran

 

[knalley]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the quick reply. The route between the server and my desktop is all gigabit, the 10/100 switch I mentioned is connected to one of the 4 ports off the gigabit router and feeds internet to the other rooms. My desktop and the FreeNAS server are connected directly into the D-Link Dir-655 Gigabit router.

My NAS box is a 32bit board and can only accept a maximum of 3 x 1GB memory and at $25+ per 1GB I'll just get a more modern board and cpu when it comes time to upgrade. I'm running ZFS and I have not even been into the swap memory yet.... so far, so good.

My main question is why does "ifconfig em0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex" not set as 1000baseTX and instead 1000baseT (thus leaving off the X).... I'm completely ignorant in this area... does the T mean it's set to transmit only and not receive? Regardless, after I set it that way, the ethernet card does not work. I can set it back to 100baseTX and it will work fine again. Even if my network couldn't handle 1000 Mbps, wouldn't the card still register as 1000baseTX when running ifconfig -a | grep media?

 

[knalley]

Just a follow up... I just found this thread http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?2315-intel-pro-1000-problem and it appears I'm not the only one having this problem.

 

[knalley]

I think I have it all figured out now and wanted to share in case others have the same problem. In my case, I thought I had cat 5e wire but in fact, after close examination, I have cat 5. This according to other research will allow my card to go into 1000baseT (no TX). When the card was switching from 100baseTX to 1000baseT it drop out, the wire was either to long of a run (50') but not likely, or it had a break in it somewhere. To test this, I moved the server into the same room as the router and connected via a 6' cat 5 cable.... that did the trick, FreeNAS booted back up and the card was showing 1000baseT. From my understanding, the baseT is the best I can expect on cat 5.

Hope this helps someone else ;)