Problem with NIC not connecting to hub.

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Simon Slater wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 July 2005 05:20, Simon Slater wrote:
> 
>>	I have a PII running FC3 with a DEC500 as eth0.  It has worked fine for
>>months when directly connected (crossover cable) to another desktop with
> 
> an
> 
>>identical FC3 installation but Realtek NIC using NFS, or similarly to a
>>laptop (Win98) using Samba. These latter two communicate fine through a
>>Synoptics Lattishub 2803.  However when the PII is connected to the
>>Lattishub, the LINK LED only flashes once every few seconds along with the
>>DATA, (DATA) & COL LED's. I cannot ping any other host. The cables
>>(straight through) have been checked. The configuration still allows

IANAE on hubs, but, it sounds like the card is having problems 
ntgotiating the transfer speed with the hub.  mii-tool can help (but I'm 
not an expert in using it).  It should be able to tell you how the NIC 
is configured.  I assume you're using a static IP configuration and that 
the PII tells you that the interface is up and running (ifconfig)?

> direct
> 
>>connection with NFS or Samba which still works fine.

??  What configuration?  The NIC?  It works with NFS and Samba when you 
use a crossover cable?

I'd use mii-tool and look at the differences in the NIC between the 2 
situations and try and determine what's wrong.

Sometimes, certain NICs don't play well with certain routers....

Is the NIC 10M?  100M?   1000M?   What about the hub?

>>	Does anyone know what the problem may be?  Any suggested fixes?
>>
>>Regards
>>Simon Slater.
> 
> 
> Not familiar with that hub, but could the cable possibly be plugged into an
> uplink configured port, not a downlink? I've done that before.
> 
> Tom
> 
> --
> 	I have not had anything to do with this hub until recently, have no
> documentation and could find nothing useful when googling.  All the RJ45
> ports on the front are MDI-X except port 1 which switches between MDI &
> MDI-X. The only other ports, which I am not familiar with using, are AUI (15
> pin RS-232 female)on the front, Terminal (9 pin RS-232 male) and Expansion
> (25 pin RS-232 female)on the rear.

I'd stick with the MDI-X ports as the MDI only port looks like an 
uplink....  (I could be wrong though, it might be possible that the 
MDI-X ports autodetect the cable, crossover or straight).  Check the hub 
specs to be sure.

> 	I have swapped the Cat 5 cable between a variety of ports (16 in all) with
> the same results: the ones that work, work anywhere, but this one won't
> regardless of position.
> 
> 	Is there a way to see what the card is doing from the FC3 side, or talk to
> the hub to find out what it is doing and how it is configured?

mii-tool and mii-diag might help.

> Simon

Good luck!


-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us