Duplex Settings

Hi All
I've been having a lot of errors logged on the Cisco Catalyst (4000 series) which one of my Solaris servers is patched into. I have a feeling they are duplex related, but I'm a bit stuck as to how to confirm that.

How do I:

  1. Check the duplex settings on my eri0 card?
  2. Set the speed and duplex settings on my eri0 card (by command line, and also for every reboot)?

OS is Solaris 5.8, Sun Fire V880.

Thanks very much!

I know you can use ndd commands to look at qfe cards - not sure of eri cards.

# ndd -set /dev/eri instance 0
# ndd -get /dev/eri link_mode
Returned status : 1=full 0=half

See how to force duplex and speed - note again this is for hme and qfe cards - may or may not work for eri.

(if this does work for you then just build a shell script to run the commands at boot - add the script to /etc/rc2.d directory with the proper naming convention)

Found more info on sunsolve - note the following in that link:

The latest Solaris Ethernet devices and drivers (hme, qfe, eri, dmfe, ge, ce) are fully 802.3 compliant.
Even though these drivers have the ability to change auto-neg, speed and duplex settings,
Sun's preferred (and recommended) way is to auto-negotiate and not disable auto-neg capabilities!
In general, any commodity Level 2 Switch will work in a Solaris environment if it provides industry
standard features in the following areas of performance: Auto-Negotiation, Internal, Bandwidth, Buffering & Latency.

Note: Sun does not endorse nor recommend any particular makes or models of switches or hubs.
Always read the manufacturer's specifications to verify that a switch meets the requirements.

In some cases, auto-negotiation capabilities could be disabled on both sides of the link, e.g., for
troubleshooting, compatibility problems, or permanent link connections in order
to "lock" the speed and duplex of the Ethernet link.

Note: Both sides, the Solaris driver and switch (the "link partners"), must be set for the same capabilities.
Setting one side to auto-neg and forcing the other side will not work correctly.

Thanks very much RTM.