Ethtool command not working

UNIX for Beginners Q & A
1

Hi All,

I am trying to find my NIC card speed in centos 5. But i am unable to get the info using ethtool command.

# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
        Link detected: yes

and even tried to look for the file # cd /sys/class/net/eth0/speed files which is also not available.

Is there any other command/file where we can get the NIC card speed ?.

Can someone please help on this issue.

2

Please post the output of ifconfig -a .

Thanks.

For example, on my server I had to take the exact entry identified in ifconfig to get this:

ubuntu:/tmp# ethtool enp1s0
Settings for enp1s0:
	Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
	Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
	                        1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full 
	Supported pause frame use: No
	Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
	Supported FEC modes: Not reported
	Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
	                        1000baseT/Full 
	Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
	Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
	Advertised FEC modes: Not reported
	Link partner advertised link modes:  1000baseT/Full 
	Link partner advertised pause frame use: No
	Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
	Link partner advertised FEC modes: Not reported
	Speed: 1000Mb/s
	Duplex: Full
	Port: MII
	PHYAD: 0
	Transceiver: internal
	Auto-negotiation: on
	Supports Wake-on: pumbg
	Wake-on: d
	Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)
			       drv probe ifdown ifup
	Link detected: yes

So, please post the output of ifconfig -a first.

3

Hi Neo,

ethtool is not giving full ouput as i expected in centos5.

i already checked ifconfig ouput. Below is the ifconfig -a output on my server.

# ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 0A:5E:09:6D:62:86
          inet addr:172.31.3.187  Bcast:172.31.15.255  Mask:255.255.240.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::85e:9ff:fe6d:6286/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:9001  Metric:1
          RX packets:1908 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1549 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:145879 (142.4 KiB)  TX bytes:165241 (161.3 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
4

Thanks and I see you are running as root, so that should not be an issue.

Let me think about this (bedtime) and if another person does not come up with a better idea, I'll post back.

5

Is this virtual machine and if yes on what platform ?

If not, what driver is running for that card, which kind of card is it.
Do you have access to lspci command from pciutils ?

Hope that helps
Regards
Peasant.

1 Like
6

Hi,

I am running my centos 5 in AWS.

# ethtool -i eth0
driver: netfront
version:
firmware-version:
bus-info: vif-0
7

LOL...

Why would you expect to be able to read detailed hardware information for an AWS server configuration when you are but a slice of a virtualization?

8

Is it hard to find the NIC card speed info as well on aws ec2 instance ?.

9

You can contact Amazon for that information.

You should also realize that a customer who pays for a slice of time on a server generally with not have any rights to the details of the underlying hardware.

If you want rights to look into hardware, you should move off virtualized services and get a dedicated server.

As I asked earlier, and I do expect an answer to this question:

Why would you expect to be able to read detailed hardware information for an AWS server configuration when you are but a slice of a virtualization?