cisco vs. dell switch on fedora

[Skunk Worx]

Skunk Worx wrote:
> hello,
> 
> i am having a heck of a time getting a dell 5324 switch to dhcp directly 
> to a couple linux boxes i have hung off it.
> 
> enabling portfast on the cisco switches instantly fixed this problem, so 
> i was suprised to see no change on the dell 5324. it's like i changed 
> nothing at all.
> 
> i have also disabled STP on the ports in question, but it still takes 
> 1-7 seconds or more for the link to come up. this conflicts with a 5 
> second timeout in the network scripts.
> 
> for now we have upped the timeout to 15 seconds in the network scripts 
> while we hunt for a real solution.
> 
> thx,
> flash
> 

thanks everyone we are looking into the firmware update and also a 
reasonable way to preload the network card module (don't want to build 
it into the kernel) as this will also work around the problem. i guess 
either grub or the modprobe.conf file will do this...something like

"install tg3 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install tg3 >/dev/null 2>&1"

like i say, just enabling "portfast" on a cisco port drops the link 
up/dhcp time to "negligable" but enabling "fastport/portfast" and 
disabling STP on the dell port drops it into the seconds range, but it 
jumps around with each try, instant once, but 7 or more seconds once in 
awhile.

all the ciscos are instant.

thx again,
flash