gigabit reverts back to 100mps, ubuntu 9.04


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Thread: gigabit reverts back to 100mps, ubuntu 9.04

  1. #1
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    gigabit reverts back to 100mps, ubuntu 9.04

    I'm building a new system with a Gigabyte E7AUM-DS2H micro-ATX motherboard. The onboard lan is a gigabit RTL 8211CL chip. The led on the port is orange when it is in gigabit mode and green if it's 100Mbps.

    When I power the machine on, the led is orange. After ubuntu loads, it goes to green. Oh, and it -is- connected to a gigabit switch.

    I don't know where in ubuntu to set it to stay in gigabit.

    Here's part of lspci:
    Code:
    00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Ethernet (rev b1)
        Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Device e000
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 2301
        Memory at e5186000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        I/O ports at c400 [size=8]
        Memory at e5187000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
        Memory at e5188000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: forcedeth
        Kernel modules: forcedeth
    Interesting, why is 'capabilities' <access denied> ??

    Here's lsmod:
    Code:
    bs@bs-sugo:/etc$ lsmod
    Module                  Size  Used by
    isofs                  43688  0 
    udf                    92584  0 
    crc_itu_t              10496  1 udf
    binfmt_misc            18572  1 
    bridge                 63776  0 
    stp                    11140  1 bridge
    bnep                   22912  2 
    video                  29332  0 
    output                 11648  1 video
    input_polldev          12688  0 
    lp                     19588  0 
    snd_hda_intel         557364  3 
    snd_pcm_oss            52352  0 
    snd_mixer_oss          24960  1 snd_pcm_oss
    snd_pcm                98952  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
    snd_seq_dummy          11524  0 
    snd_seq_oss            41856  0 
    snd_seq_midi           15744  0 
    snd_rawmidi            33920  1 snd_seq_midi
    snd_seq_midi_event     16512  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
    snd_seq                66144  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
    snd_timer              34064  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
    snd_seq_device         16276  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
    snd                    78792  15 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
    soundcore              16800  1 snd
    ppdev                  16776  0 
    pcspkr                 11136  0 
    serio_raw              14468  0 
    snd_page_alloc         18704  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
    shpchp                 44572  0 
    parport_pc             45096  1 
    parport                49712  3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc
    joydev                 20864  0 
    hid_logitech           18432  0 
    ff_memless             14472  1 hid_logitech
    usbhid                 47040  1 hid_logitech
    ohci1394               42036  0 
    ieee1394              108416  1 ohci1394
    forcedeth              68368  0 
    floppy                 75688  0 
    fbcon                  49792  0 
    tileblit               11264  1 fbcon
    font                   17024  1 fbcon
    bitblit                14464  1 fbcon
    softcursor             10368  1 bitblit
    bs@bs-sugo:/etc$
    (If this should be in 'hardware', feel free to move it.)
    Last edited by bs_texas; 04-20-2009 at 03:56 PM.
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    Folding is Fun

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  2. #2
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    Hmm; are you sure you have the orange/green correct? Is this from a doc somewhere?

    I ask because I have almost exactly the same behavior from my gigabit cards (PCI add-on in this case, but whatever): while the machine is powered down, and initially at bootup, the LED on the switch is orange. After the driver loads and initializes the card, the LED on the switch turns green. But in this case, the manual for the switch says that orange is 100mbit, and green is gigabit. The LEDs on the cards themselves show the same behavior: while receiving only standby power (which they receive because they wait for a WoL magic packet), the cards are in 100mbit mode; once the driver initializes them, they switch to gigabit.

    OTOH, I don't know whether the forcedeth driver can do gigabit or not (the initial nvidia MCP controllers were 100meg only). Are you sure that's the right card? It doesn't look like it's anything from RTL...

    Apparently ethtool can tell you what speed the card is running at, for wired NICs ("ethtool eth0", for instance, should give you this info). It might be a good idea to run that on every NIC you know about.

  3. #3
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    Thumbs up

    ethtool !! Thanks for that! How did I get this far without knowing about that?

    Apparently the info in the motherboard manual is incorrect. It shows 2 LEDs on the port. The left one is the speed LED and the right one is the activity LED. Then it says that orange indicates 1 Gbps data rate, green is 100 Mbps data rate, and off is 10 Mbps data rate. The activity LED is blinking for data transmission and off for no transmission. [Edit] Oh, and it's that same manual that tells me the lan chip is the RTL 8211CL.

    The reality is, when I first turn on the computer, the speed LED goes orange and the activity light blinks yellow while it is initializing. Then ubuntu starts and the speed LED goes green and blinks for activity. The activity LED stays off.

    ethtool tells me it's at 1000 Mbps (1 Gbps). I believe that over the manual. Also, I realized that the port on the Gig switch is also indicating 1 Gbps.

    Thanks for the help.
    Last edited by bs_texas; 04-20-2009 at 03:57 PM.
    -------------
    Folding is Fun

    I thought I made a mistake once, but, of course, I was mistaken.

  4. #4
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    If I learned anything in my architecture course, and surprisingly enough I did, it's that the one and only true measure of a system's performance is execution time (of course this was more related to the CPU being affected by many things -- not just the clock speed). I know you have resolved your issue now, but nonetheless, if you ever have this problem again you could just try transferring a large file from one machine to another (using scp for example). If you get speeds of 27 megabytes/second or something similar then you know for certain that your NIC is functioning at gigabit speeds.
    "The author of that poem is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name."

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