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Fresh build crashes

jeffreywhunter

By jeffreywhunter
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koyaanisqatsi Rookie

koyaanisqatsi

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Have you replaced your network cable yet?  I troubleshot a whole data center for 4 critical hours because of a bad cable once.  Now it's the first thing I replace.  :)

 

The 100Mb cards don't always play well with Gb switches and hubs, especially older cards.  It is common to have to configure the ports at both ends of the cable so that they don't auto-negotiate, because negotiation would fail frequently in the way you have described.  But this may be more than you care to dive into just to test with this card.  If you can't or don't want to configure the ports, you should see if you can find a newer Gb card to test with. Even just a cheapie from the local office supply store will allow you to verify the situation.

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JohnO Apprentice

JohnO

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@koyaanisqatsi - I'm not against getting another NIC.  In fact I was considering a two port NIC to improve throughput using bonding.  Is that worth the effort in a home media environment with 4 or 5 active devices?

 

I added this 2-port card to my home server.  Seems well supported.  I run VMWare ESXi on this server (where Unraid is a guest OS).

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pro-1000-PT-Gigabit-Dual-Port-PCIe-NIC-Adapter-EXPI9402PTG2P20-Full-He-/291428273420?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43da7a8d0c

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JohnO Apprentice

JohnO

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@JohnO - will dual nics on an Unraid server only offer redundancy, or can you bond the nics together to get faster throughput?  I have a netgear GS108EV1 switch (currently) about to replace with a Rosewill RGS-1024 switch.

 

I'm not sure.  I'm using mine as two separate ports, and my base OS on this box is VMware ESXi, so even if my Unraid Guest OS saw the two interfaces, it would probably be seeing the VMware network interface layer.

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koyaanisqatsi Rookie

koyaanisqatsi

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@koyaanisqatsi - I'm not against getting another NIC.  In fact I was considering a two port NIC to improve throughput using bonding.  Is that worth the effort in a home media environment with 4 or 5 active devices?

 

I added this 2-port card to my home server.  Seems well supported.  I run VMWare ESXi on this server (where Unraid is a guest OS).

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pro-1000-PT-Gigabit-Dual-Port-PCIe-NIC-Adapter-EXPI9402PTG2P20-Full-He-/291428273420?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43da7a8d0c

 

UnRAID 6 looks like it supports all the bonding modes (I don't have a v5 installation to look at).  But you'll have to move a lot of data to see the performance benefits.  If you've got a bunch of HD streams running at 20Mb/sec or more, it may help, assuming your CPU and storage can keep up.  Otherwise a single port will do you just as well.  Your network equipment will also determine what level of benefit you get from bonding. Home networking devices can rarely handle wire speed across the device (my Linksys E2000 maxes out at about 400Mbs total across all ports) and don't usually have the configs for bonding.  Some bonding modes don't need support from the switch-end of the cable, though (I can't remember which modes). Best thing to do is try it and see. At worst, it will cost you a couple hours' testing and maybe a few bucks.

 

Those Pro/1000 cards are nice.  We used them and their 4-port brothers in our vmWare farm at work.  They are PCI-Express x4, so make sure you have the slot for it.  Also, they are server cards, instead of desktop/workstation-grade, which should help for higher traffic loads too.  I am a little concerned about the Pro/1000 card using the same driver module (e1000) as the card you're having problems with.  I don't think it will be an issue, but I wanted to mention it just in case.

 

I think once you get a better card in there, you'll be good to go.  You may be able to fix the funky Intel port with a driver update, but that gets a little dicey, and I'm not sure how it would work with unRAID, where most things come up fresh on a reboot.

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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@JohnO - So I got the Intel Pro/1000 PT Dual Port 10/100/1000 PCIe D50868-003 EXPI9402PTBLK today.  Plugged it in, Unraid is not seeing it.  Is there a driver that has to be loaded, or is the driver in the build?  How did you configure the adapter.  This was a pull from a server, so if the card is configurable, I'm sure its holding some type of configuration (remote boot?).  How did you configure your adapter?  Is there support software I need to use to configure the card?

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JohnO Apprentice

JohnO

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@JohnO - So I got the Intel Pro/1000 PT Dual Port 10/100/1000 PCIe D50868-003 EXPI9402PTBLK today.  Plugged it in, Unraid is not seeing it.  Is there a driver that has to be loaded, or is the driver in the build?  How did you configure the adapter.  This was a pull from a server, so if the card is configurable, I'm sure its holding some type of configuration (remote boot?).  How did you configure your adapter?  Is there support software I need to use to configure the card?

 

That was fast!  As I mentioned above, mine is in a box running VMware ESXi -- the drivers for that card are included in ESXi.  What ever shows up to the Unraid guest OS is probably a VMware interface (which, I think emulates the Intel Pro 1000).

 

Hopefully someone else with that board who is using it natively to boot Unraid can chime in.

 

John

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Frank1940 Veteran

Frank1940

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@JohnO - So I got the Intel Pro/1000 PT Dual Port 10/100/1000 PCIe D50868-003 EXPI9402PTBLK today.  Plugged it in, Unraid is not seeing it.  Is there a driver that has to be loaded, or is the driver in the build?  How did you configure the adapter.  This was a pull from a server, so if the card is configurable, I'm sure its holding some type of configuration (remote boot?).  How did you configure your adapter?  Is there support software I need to use to configure the card?

 

Perhaps a stupid question but did you turn off the on-board NIC?

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koyaanisqatsi Rookie

koyaanisqatsi

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According to this:

http://web.mit.edu/cron/documentation/dell-server-admin/en/IntelNIC/e1000.htm

 

and a few other places, that card uses the e1000 driver.  You should be able to verify manually with:

 

modprobe e1000

 

to load the driver.  And then

 

ifconfig

 

and/or

 

dmesg

 

to see if it found the card.

 

When I run the modprobe command, this shows up in my dmesg output:

 

e1000: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.3.21-k8-NAPI
e1000: Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.

 

Although, I'm not sure what you'll have to do to get it to detect the card automatically if the manual test works.

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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Evidently the driver is already part of UnRaid.  I did a dmesg and grep for e1000 and looks like the card is recognized.

 

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150414-snd3-218kb

 

However, the card is definitely not active.  I noticed during boot that the activity and link lights are on for the first part of the boot (noting its connected at 1gb) but about halfway through boot, I assume when the card driver is loaded, the lights go out.  When I ping 127.0.0.1, network is unreachable...

 

I looked into the Ctrl-S Intel Boot Agent Menu, but there was nothing that I could configure other than to disable the boot message and time.

 

Slot 0

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150414-9t1b-175kb

Slot 1

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150414-igyc-158kb

 

I’m not looking to boot off the network, so this shouldn’t even be an issue.  Right?  I didn’t see any place to configure PXE.

 

Thoughts?

 

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JohnO Apprentice

JohnO

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However, its not active.  I noticed during boot that the activity and link lights are on for the first part of the boot (noting its connected at 1gb) but about halfway through boot, I assume when the card driver is loaded, the lights go out.

 

Do you have another chassis where you can test this card to rule out a bad card, or a conflict of some sort?

 

Do you have (or can you set up) a different, bootable OS from a DVD or USB memory stick so you can see if the UnRaid O/S is the issue?

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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@JohnO - interesting should have thought about this.  I loaded up UnRaid 5 and the same hardware it works with no issues.  So this is an UnRaid 6 issue.  Is this a defect report?  I put one in a week ago on the P8P67 Deluxe onboard enet and have not seen a response.

 

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150414-39rs-227kb

 

If it works with UnRaid 5, then what do i need to do to get it to work with UnRaid 6.

 

Jeff...

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koyaanisqatsi Rookie

koyaanisqatsi

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Odd.  Your dmesg output indicates the e1000e driver is loading, not the e1000 driver.  Apparently those drivers are very similar and have some overlap on older PCIe cards.  I loaded both and now see this in my dmesg:

 

e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 2.3.2-k
e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999 - 2014 Intel Corporation.
e1000: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.3.21-k8-NAPI
e1000: Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.

 

Unload the e1000e module and then load the e1000 module and see if that makes any difference.

 

rmmod e1000e
modprobe e1000
lsmod

 

Also, which driver is unRAID 5 using?  Does it load the e1000 or e1000e module?

 

 

 

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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Interestingly enough, UnRaid 5 is using e1000e

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150415-slkg-214kb

 

So why, since UnRaid 6 is already looking at e1000e, isn't using that one correctly?

 

I ran the commands you indicated, but when its all done, here's the result

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150415-bnjr-204kb

 

e1000e is still loaded?  Even though lsmod shows only e1000.

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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I found this interesting article on the e1000 vs e1000e drivers for Linux.  Apparently there are two sets of code for the same hardware!  And it appears we're dealing with that...?

 

https://lwn.net/Articles/278016/

 

Given this NIC works fine with UnRaid 5 (which uses e1000e per the dmesg), does that mean we need to make a change to UnRaid 6?  I'd make the change, but just not that familiar with configuring Linux drivers.  I know the concepts and can do it no problem in the Microsoft world.  But not the Linux world.  Can anyone point me to a link that discusses that?

 

I did a side by side comparison of UnRaid 5 and UnRaid 6

dmesg comparison

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150415-iszu-251kb.jpg

ifconfig comparison

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150415-bzjb-220kb.jpg

lsmod comparison

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/12412/20150415-wlrc-151kb

lsmod is very different between the systems.  Its interesting to note that both versions have e1000e listed as a valid module (although different sizes).  And Unraid 6 has a new module PTP that uses the e1000e (Peer-to-Peer?).

 

Regardless, not sure what to do next.

 

thanks in advance...

Jeff...

 

 

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koyaanisqatsi Rookie

koyaanisqatsi

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EDIT: Half-baked reply.  I need more sleep.

 

Ya, that code base issue with the driver is pretty lame.  I think that's why Intel just wants people to download the latest drivers and install them. Not a great option for unRAID though.

 

Looking at your dmesg, the e1000e module is definitely the better choice.

 

1. Have you been powering down the chassis for each test (maybe even pull the plug)?  It may need a cold boot to properly reset.

 

2. Found a thread on the Ubuntu forums where a kernel boot option was added to fix link issues: pcie_aspm=off

 

You can add the option at boot time by hitting Tab at the boot menu.  But I haven't figured out how to make it permanent.  It looks like the boot loader config may not be modifiable without some major hacking.  I can't find the LILO binaries and conf file anywhere.

 

3. Also ran across posts (and I've seen it myself years ago when these cards were new) where the card will eventually come up with a link - something like 30-60 minutes after booting.

 

Post the contents of your /boot/config/network.cfg file.

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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RE: Power down - I've  been doing shutdown -r now t=0 - which I believe power cycles the system.  I've also, over the course of things, have powered off many times.  No different behavior.

 

As to Network.cfg - Its the default, I've not made any changes yet.

 

# Generated network settings

USE_DHCP=yes

IPADDR=

NETMASK=

GATEWAY=

 

I will be defining this as I have under UnRaid 5.

 

# Generated network settings

USE_DHCP=no

IPADDR=192.168.1.100

NETMASK=255.255.255.0

GATEWAY=192.168.1.1

 

But for now, just trying to get the adapter to function on the network.  A ping return from 127.0.0.1 would make me do backflips!

 

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jeffreywhunter Collaborator

jeffreywhunter

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That makes sense...however, several people have told me this card works?  Perhaps they have UnRaid 5!!

 

It feels to me like this IS a driver issue on UnRaid 6.  I've posted defect reports for both the onboard ethernet and the Intel Pro/1000 card.  Is that something we can get fixed?  Who would drive that/do that?

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