RHEL4: cannot kickstart clients with Broadcom DCM5751 Gigabit

[Alex TOURNIER]

Iain

Once DHCP fails, if I try gain it fails again..it does not work ...I use 
a CISCO switch CATALYST 4503.
I did try also with RHEL 4 update 2 as adives by Brian, but the 
behaviour is the same.
It works if I insert a 3COM 3C905CX into the host...but it is just a 
test...i want to use the Broadcom NIC as it's integrated on the mother 
board and I have a bunch of those to be installed.
Do you think that using  a simple Hub instead of a Switch  could help?

Cheers,
Alex.


> Brian Long wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 09:39 +0100, Alex TOURNIER wrote:
>>
>>> I have a serious problem with a RHEL4 KS installation.
>>> My KS server works well because I can perform installation with no 
>>> problems on various hardware plaforms.
>>> However the latest hardware platform I was delivered (ie Siemens 
>>> Celsius R630) the installation fails.
>>> I am almost sure that the problem is with the NIC (Broadcom 
>>> NetXtreme DCM 5751 Gigabit ), it looks like the NIC is somehow 
>>> turned off (even if  enabled in the BIOS) , or not working at the 
>>> right speed and thus the DHCP server is not able to assign the IP. 
>>> On the DHCP server nothing appears in the log file (as if there was 
>>> no communication at all). I boot the client from a CD  (made  with 
>>> the images available on the 1st CD of RHEL 4 distrib)....I also 
>>> tried to make another CD including the driver from BROADCOM 
>>> (bcm5700.ko instead of tg3.ho), but no success. If I disable the 
>>> Broadcom NIC, and insert a second NIC the KS install works fine 
>>> using this second NIC!!!!
>>
>
> I have seen a similar issue and i believe that this has been discussed 
> before. However, it goes something like this
>
> Once booted, the server will then ask for a DHCP IP address. This has 
> the side effect of resetting the network card and consequently the 
> port on the switch. The DHCP request can time out here as the time 
> that the NIC and the switch take to re-negotiate the link.
>
> This may or may not be your issue; i would hazard a guess it is 
> because it does seem to be linked to the Broadcom chipset you 
> describe. Once DHCP fails, do you try again? Does this work the second 
> time? What switch hardware are you using?
>
> Cheers
>
> Iain
>
>>>
>>> I would be very happy of any advice that could help me in solving 
>>> the problem, I have many of these PC to be installed, and I need 
>>> disperatly a  KS solution...
>>> Thank you in advance.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alex,
>>
>> We have the HP XW4300 workstation which has BCM5752.  I don't know if
>> your issue is the same as ours, but only RHEL 3 U6 and RHEL 4 U2 work.
>> You don't mention which update of RHEL 4 you are kickstarting.  Is it
>> U2?  If not, please try U2 as it contains an updated tg3 driver for the
>> newest Broadcom chipsets.
>>
>> /Brian/
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
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Alexandre TOURNIER
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Joint Research Centre
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Global Vegetation Monitoring

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