SGI: Hardware

I use an O2 as a firewall/gateway, running ipfilter. The onboard ec0 connects to my cable modem. Previously,
a normal SGI 10/100 card then connected to my 'internal' switch (48-port Netgear GS748T; this has four ports
one can use for Gbit transceivers). I've just replaced the SGI 10/100 with a Phobos P1000 optical card, but
I'm having problems getting the link to work. It did briefly, but it was slow and kept stalling, now it's not
connecting at all, keeps reporting the link as severed, but I'm wondering if I have some kernel parameters wrong.

The P1000 is detected ok as interface pge0, I've set it up in the same way as the old ec1 card was (in
/etc/netif.options, etc.) so ifconfig -av gives (ignoring lo0):



The recvspace & sendspace used to be lower, so I've tried raising them but to no avail.


/etc/hosts has:




/etc/ethers has:



ipnat.conf has:




In case anyone wants to know, here's the hinv (it's normally an R7K/350 with 512MB, but since I'm
using the system to post this, I've temporarily put in my R7K/600 board to speed up Seamonkey, but
everything else is the same):



Note that I can't put the old 10/100 back in because I've sold it. Hence the P1000 upgrade was kinda
forced (I'd been delaying trying until I had the time to test & be sure it was going to work ok).

Odd things...

a) The GigE switch does have a link light for the P1000 link as I type, but if I do something like change a
network parameter and restart the daemons, the light goes off & stays off, with SYSLOG giving:



If I unplug the cable at the switch and then plug it back in again, the Console reports:



but the link light does not come back on.


b) If I try route get for my main Fuel system, which is 192.168.252.10, it gives this:



Is that normal? Just wondering if it's supposed to show 192.168.252.0 instead of 192.168.252.10.

Cheers!

Ian.

Not sure how helpful they might be, but the manual ftp://ftp.sonicwall.com/pub/software/NI ... dified.pdf and the IRIX 6.5 driver ftp://ftp.sonicwall.com/pub/software/NI ... 0-v6.5.zip for the P1000 are available via ftp.

Of all people I'm sure you've been there, downloaded that, (I didn't see them on your web site, but I also didn't spend too much time looking), but on the slim chance you haven't I went ahead and posted the links.

recondas writes:
> Not sure how helpful they might be, but the manual ftp://ftp.sonicwall.com/pub/software/NI ... dified.pdf and the
> IRIX 6.5 driver ftp://ftp.sonicwall.com/pub/software/NI ... 0-v6.5.zip for the P1000 are available via ftp.

Thanks! As you suspected though, I do already have them; they're on my Depot Resources page, the file is p1000.tar.gz I think. I read
through the manual, it has nothing useful about kernel tuning.

Just so odd... everything looks as it should be, but it doesn't work. Guess I'll have to find another normal 10/100 & put it back in. :\

Ian.

I tried to make a P1000 running in my O2 without success. I don't get any link problems, but packet loss. So I decided my P1000 is broken.
I got two ideas regarding your problem:
a) Are all optics and cables multimode? If you mix single and multimode you can run in similar problems
b) If you have a managed switch: toggle the auto negotiation mode of your switchport

diegel writes:
> ... So I decided my P1000 is broken.

Hmm, I suppose that is one possibility, a bad card. I have several, so I'll try another.


> a) Are all optics and cables multimode? If you mix single and multimode you can run in similar problems

I'm not sure. Atm the setup only has one optical cable, the one linking the P1000 to a GBIC in the switch. All other
cabling is copper.


> b) If you have a managed switch: toggle the auto negotiation mode of your switchport

So far I've done nothing more than connect CAT5 cables to the switch. Not sure how to do anything beyond
that, will have to look into it, though I did set the P1000 to be forced Gbit instead of autoneg.

Ian.

Ian, have you checked the switch to make sure that the port with the GBIC you're connecting the O2 to is configured to communicate with the other ports? I'm just thinking of a switch I got that had a config with some ports on different VLANs, and I hadn't had reason to check the config until I was tearing my hair out over a machine that couldn't see the rest...

The switch doesn't quite work that way.

The four copper ports marked 45 to 48 are simply 'shared' with the equivalent option ports, so one can connect a
copper line to port 45T (as it's labelled) or an optical line via port 45F, but not both. I don't think it needs any
special configuration (it's just a lowly Netgear, not a Cisco. ;D)

Ian.

mapesdhs wrote: diegel writes:

> a) Are all optics and cables multimode? If you mix single and multimode you can run in similar problems

I'm not sure. Atm the setup only has one optical cable, the one linking the P1000 to a GBIC in the switch. All other
cabling is copper.

Yes of course you have only this optical connection. Are you sure you use a multimode (50/125) cable and not a singlemode (9/125). The numbers should be printed on the cable. I guess your switch works with SFP modules. Multimode is SX and singlemode are LX or LH SFPs .

The cable is multimode (it says 50/125) and yes the card is an SX.

I'm going to try using the Netgear management system from a PC to configure the switch (it employs a web-based interface).

Ian.

Quick update, got it working! Echoing diegel's comments, turned out the card was faulty. Tried another one this
morning and the connection worked first time, though atm the performance is very poor so I'm still looking into
possible kernel tuning issues. However, it's faster than the old 10/100 which is something, perhaps because
now the link is full duplex (10/100 card for O2 does not support full duplex mode).

If anyone has any ideas about how to tune the kernel for optimal performance of a Gbit card, please post, PM
or email. Perhaps sendspace/recvspace values?

Ian.

PS. To give you some idea how bad the performance is just now, a simple ftp only gave 15MB/sec, while a
ttcp test gave a mere 32MB/sec.

I'm scouring the internet for a copy of the manual and the drivers for the P1000. I can't seem to find these anywhere. Any chance someone still has copies?

See my previous post; if you'd be happy with such low speeds, I'll see if I can find the drivers. Not bothered adding them to my site so far because the card is so slow.

I have one and was wanting to experiment on it myself. Any help getting the drivers would be much appreciated!

I was able to locate drivers and manual. I'm providing a copy at gopher://firien.helluin.org:70/1/sgi/software/

mapesdhs wrote: Quick update, got it working! Echoing diegel's comments, turned out the card was faulty. Tried another one this
morning and the connection worked first time, though atm the performance is very poor so I'm still looking into
possible kernel tuning issues. However, it's faster than the old 10/100 which is something, perhaps because
now the link is full duplex (10/100 card for O2 does not support full duplex mode).

If anyone has any ideas about how to tune the kernel for optimal performance of a Gbit card, please post, PM
or email. Perhaps sendspace/recvspace values?

Ian.

PS. To give you some idea how bad the performance is just now, a simple ftp only gave 15MB/sec, while a
ttcp test gave a mere 32MB/sec.

What was the CPU doing during these tests? I suspect the O2's cpu is woefully underpowered to handle processing gigabit traffic. Maybe try jumbo frames if the rest of your network supports it, though. It would cut down on some of the overhead processing that your CPU is doing. I'm just taking stabs in the dark based on general networking knowledge, though.

EDIT: Bahahahahaha Ian was working on this in 2012. I am good at paying attention. Ian, did you ever get reasonable performance out of that gigabit board?

The Phobos P1000 works on IP27 and IP30 as well, and I suspect it works quite well on those platforms.

The other way around, the QLogic QLA12160 or QLA2342 (dual 2Gb FC) work very well on Octane or Origin 200, but poorly on O2. And my O2 has a faster CPU than my Origin 200. The O2 PCI interface is simply under performing, probably due to the way it interfaces the UMA architecture of the O2.

I was hoping to do some more experiments on the o2 to confirm. It seems like there is about 70MB/s of memory bandwidth available. I wonder what is causing the poor performance...

Sorry for the delay! No, I never got it working properly, gave up in the end, replaced the gateway O2 with a modern Intel uATX board that has two GigE ports, fitted an IvyBridge 2.8GHz 2-core Pentium (G2020 iirc), 840 Pro 128GB SSD, fanless PSU, micro tower case, wifi kybd with touchpad, etc., works much better. The PC runs Zentyal Linux for gateway/firewall duties. Here are some pics: front , side , internals 1 , internals 2 , cabling .

The whole thing uses very little power.

Ian.