[ipxe-devel] link down

[Christian Nilsson]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 9:06 AM, Joakim Tjernlund
<Joakim.Tjernlund at infinera.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 1970-01-01 at 00:00 +0000, Christian Nilsson wrote:
>>
>> For reference that is this line in intel.c:
>> PCI_ROM ( 0x8086, 0x15d8, "i219v-4", "I219-V (4)", INTEL_NO_PHY_RST ),
>>
>> > >
>> > > No config change needed, the reason to check the link leds is to see
>> > > if the hardware is up, and it's just iPXE to fails. (and of course
>> >
>> > The link LEDS are ON
>> > if I pull and then insert the cable while in ipxe shell then the link LEDs
>> > are ON again. Indicates to me that the link is working but ipxe.lkrn does not
>> > se it.
>> >
>> > > that the cable is connected but we understand it already is)
>> > > One other thing is that switch ports with STP enabled some times can
>> > > take to long to be properly up (but in those cases it is more common
>> > > to get DHCP timeouts)
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > To build for efi you are using make bin-x86_64-efi/ipxe.efi
>> > > To build for pcbios use make bin/ipxe.pxe
>> > > These are just examples tho.
>> >
>> > Yes, I gout them all built and ipxe.efi actually works
>> >
>> > Jocke
>>
>> So which build was it that didn't work? (or did you do something else
>> differently, like booting OS and rebooting instead of starting from
>> cold power on)
>
> It is booting ipxe from grub2 using: linux16 boot/ipxe.lkrn that fails.
> I also just noted that if I pull the cable, boot into IPXE (linux16 boot/ipxe.lkrn), insert
> the cable, I get link OK but ifstat says:
> TXE: 6 x Operation not supported http://ipxe.org/3c654003
>
>>
>> Also worth checking in cases like this: what is the link speed that
>> the switch sees, and is the switch gigabit capable?
>
> I don't have access to the switch but it is a GBE switch.

So ipxe.lkrn is only usable in pcbios mode, so might be some different
initialization. (efi firmware does some initialization on the NIC
which is not done when booting in pcbios mode)

Don't have time to look at any documentation right now, but you could
test to replace INTEL_NO_PHY_RST in the above line with just a 0 and
see if that works differently.
If you do make sure you also double check if it works in both efi and
pcbios mode. (and if possible ensure link up works in max speed on
both gig and fast ethernet switch)
More likely tho some different flag is needed instead to get it to
negotiate correctly from power of mode for these i219v-4 nics