Comments on: Broadcom NICs dropping out on Solaris 10

By: Attila

Attila — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:33:59 +0000

All,

we were experiencing exactly the same problem on a Solaris 10u8 installation running on a VSphere cluster. The initially configured virtual NIC was an Intel e1000g. Switching to VMwares own vmxnet3s virtual NIC seems to have solved the problem but since this is load related one can’t be sure. The underlying hardware consists of DELL R710 servers with broadcom NICs. Very strange.

Attila

By: Teddie

Teddie — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:47:33 +0000

Nice, we are trying this out currently. The problem is a bit unfortunate as it only comes out under some load.

By: Alasdair

Alasdair — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:33:24 +0000

Hi All,

I’ve just spoken with a chap called mui on #opensolaris on irc.freenode.net who reports that this issue relates to “C States”. Disabling “C States” in the BIOS (It’s in “Processor Settings” on Dell boxes) supposedly will work-around the issue. C States support was added in Solaris 10 update 8, so this is probably why our Solaris 10 update 7 boxes are unaffected.

Cheers,

Alasdair

By: Alasdair

Alasdair — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:37:56 +0000

Hi All,

I’ve done a new post here which has the latest info in:

http://blogs.everycity.co.uk/alasdair/2010/06/update-to-broadcom-nic-dropping-out-on-solaris-issue/

Cheers,

Alasdair

By: Teddie

Teddie — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:47:10 +0000

Anyone tried yet on the earlier R410 BIOS’s? The release notes don’t contain anything about a change in Broadcom firmware.

By: Alasdair

Alasdair — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:12:40 +0000

For those with Dell servers wishing to downgrade to a previous BIOS release, Dell have an FTP site which has these:

http://ftp.dell.com/bios/

For example, here are the Linux BIOS update binaries for a Dell R410:

PER410_BIOS_LX_1.0.5.BIN
PER410_BIOS_LX_1.1.5.BIN
PER410_BIOS_LX_1.2.4.BIN
PER410_BIOS_LX_1.3.8.BIN
PER410_BIOS_LX_1.3.9.BIN

Cheers,

Alasdair

By: Teddie

Teddie — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:01:59 +0000

We’re experiencing the same thing with a Dell R410.. will be trying out BIOS downgrade soon

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:00:10 +0000

Like Daniel I have seen it on version 4 and version 5. If you look at bug 6938878 which is on the related list of bug 6926051 they mention broadcoms code has updated to 6.0.1 and intergrated into OpenSolaris. I’m pushing our vendor for a fix from broadcom if possible.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:22:19 +0000

Hi,
I, along with James, also have seen this issue on HP DL380 G6 servers with Broadcom 5709 nic’s.

I’ve seen it on Firmware Ver4060004 and Ver5020002 and drivers 4.6.2 and 5.2.2

great (in a way) that it’s not just James and I having this issue

By: Alasdair

Alasdair — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:11:44 +0000

Hi James,

What does “grep -i BCM /var/adm/mes*” show for the Firmware revision?

Cheers,

Alasdair