D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

General support questions including new installations
Post Reply
chashock
Posts: 16
Joined: 2008/02/01 06:21:16

D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by chashock » 2008/02/21 05:35:01

I have a strange problem that I simply haven't been able to solve.

I've got a brand new Dell T105 server that has a mix of PCI and PCIe slots. I've put Intel e1000 adapters in the PCIe slots and they work perfectly right out of the box. I install the D-link DGE-530T in the PCI slot, it is recognized by the system automatically, it lights up, and shows link, but it can't ping out or be pinged to. It shows up in ifconfig as though it is active, but it simply will not ping in our out. I thought it might be the card, so I swapped it out with another unit with the same results. In dmesg and lspci -v the card shows up as the DLink dge-530t as it should.

Based on a couple of forum posts I read, I thought it might be the driver, so I removed the skge driver and installed the sk98lin driver (with a great deal of difficulty) from Marvell , and it briefly connected, until I took the adapter down and restarted it (so I'd know if my changes would survive a reboot). Then I'm right back in the same situation

I got to looking at the ARP cache, and the IP of the D-link shows up in the cache of the network gateway, and the gateway IP shows up in the ARP cache of the T105, but it shows up as 'incomplete' and the MAC addresses are missing. Since it couldn't be pinged and couldn't ping out, I wasn't expecting it to show up in the ARP cache at all.

Oh, I know it isn't the slot, b/c I put a 10/100 card using the tulip driver into the slot and like a charm it comes up and works correctly. I ended up leaving the 10/100 in for now until i can maybe get a new angle to work, but I'd like to get the gig card working as that interface is used for a multimedia archive app and could benefit from the added bandwidth.

Does anyone have experience with getting this card to work under 5.1? I've searched this forum, Dell's forum, and others as I could find info on Google, looking for success with this card, and everything I've found speaks to the 2.4 kernel using the sk98lin driver from Marvell, and most discussion about the 2.6 kernel speaks to using the embedded skge driver, but I can't get either to work. I have these cards working in other 2.4 based hosts (albeit non-Centos) without problems (and have in fact gotten better performance than the equivalent Intel card, surprisingly). The support forums at D-link are basically non-existent, so I thought I'd throw it out here.

Any other troubleshooting ideas would be greatly appreciated, as well as any advice on what I've missed.

Thanks in advance!

__3pm__
Posts: 4
Joined: 2007/12/18 08:03:09

Re: D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by __3pm__ » 2008/02/25 08:40:35

As I understand this is a typical skge/sk98lin driver behavior. It cannot handle link up/down situations. I tried to use those nics in my centos xen host machines, then just sent them into trash.
So I consider marvell chipset based nics as unusable in linux production environment as long as someone wrote down a good linux driver.
I put intel e1000 nics and I am happy now.

chashock
Posts: 16
Joined: 2008/02/01 06:21:16

Re: D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by chashock » 2008/02/29 21:41:28

Well, that's not good, since there seem to be quite a few different brands of GigE NICs using the Marvell chipsets. This also seems to be a 2.6 kernel issue, as I have 3 systems running the 2.4 kernel (not CentOS, but still Linux) where the sk98lin driver DOES work with these cards.

User avatar
AlanBartlett
Forum Moderator
Posts: 9345
Joined: 2007/10/22 11:30:09
Location: ~/Earth/UK/England/Suffolk
Contact:

D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by AlanBartlett » 2008/03/01 12:56:22

Please remember that [b]CentOS[/b] (and [b]RHEL[/b]) is an OS primarily for [b]servers[/b]. As a result, video controllers and NICs often found in laptops, deskops, etc, will not be supported "out of the box" without some work - and then there is no guarantee that certain makes will ever work.

To say (as I often see posted) that "It works under Windoze/Xyzzy/Phoo-bar (etc)" can be very misleading.

Please also remember that [b]Linux[/b] is the OS kernel [b]not[/b] the OS. [b]Red Hat[/b] (to use them as an example) haven't helped by naming their products (say) RHL 9, RHEL 5, etc - to use the commonly accepted abbreviations.

HTH.
Alan.

chashock
Posts: 16
Joined: 2008/02/01 06:21:16

Re: D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by chashock » 2008/03/04 04:52:43

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. I'm not talking about how a card works under another OS, I never expect something that works under a Windows install to work under Linux, any more than I would expect it to work under AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris (or between Windows versions for that matter). While I don't consider myself an expert, I'm in no wise new to this.

I'm trying to figure out if there's something I haven't tried. I can get these cards to work under other distros with various iterations of the 2.4 kernel, but for some reason it doesn't work properly under CentOS 5.1 w/the 2.6 kernel. It compiles properly, installs properly, ./ifup brings up the card, but no traffic crosses it. This appears to be a very popular chipset for PCI GigE cards, and while I prefer Intel cards as a general rule, my clients don't want to pay a premium for them in their legacy workstations/servers if they don't have to; I can't really blame them. I've replaced the stock driver with a newly compiled version of the driver, modified the kernel, and done all the things I think should be done, and that I've done in the past to get commodity off the shelf hardware to work with CentOS and/or RedHat.

Are you telling me this is simply a matter of 2.6 kernel development catching up with the chip set, or is there some other wisdom you can share with me in troubleshooting the issue / configuration?

Thanks!!!

User avatar
AlanBartlett
Forum Moderator
Posts: 9345
Joined: 2007/10/22 11:30:09
Location: ~/Earth/UK/England/Suffolk
Contact:

Re: D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by AlanBartlett » 2008/03/04 16:29:06

Sorry for the delay in my reply, I have been trying to see if I can find anything that will help.

I am a little puzzled by what you say:

[quote]their legacy workstations/servers[/quote]

and then in the last sentence

[quote]a matter of 2.6 kernel development catching up with the chip set[/quote]

I have had a look at the configurable options of the 2.6.18-53.1.13 kernel as supplied by [b]CentOS[/b] (&, obviously, [b]RHEL[/b]) and find that the only DLink Gigabit NIC support that can be configured into a kernel build is for either a DGE-550T or a DL2000 card. I haven't gone as far as looking at the latest kernel version available from http://www.kernel.org (2.6.24.3) but basically, it seems to me, that the DGE-530T is now regarded as a legacy controller. Hence it will not be a case of the 2.6 kernel development catching up with the chip set.

If you are unable to obtain a driver module for this NIC that compiles and operates correctly then there are two options:

(1) select a distro that has native support for these cards with, as you have mentioned, a 2.4.x based kernel
(2) replace the cards and stay with [b]CentOS 5[/b]

I realise this is not what you would like to hear but - so I have been told - reliable NICs that are supported by [b]CentOS 5[/b] "out of the box" can be purchased for about $5.

HTH.
Alan.

User avatar
AlanBartlett
Forum Moderator
Posts: 9345
Joined: 2007/10/22 11:30:09
Location: ~/Earth/UK/England/Suffolk
Contact:

Re: D-link DGE-530T NIC and sk?? drivers

Post by AlanBartlett » 2008/03/05 11:10:12

Further to my last post, I have now had a look at the latest stable kernel (2.6.24.3) available from http://www.kernel.org and see that only the DLink DGE-550T and DL2000 are supported.

Alan.

Post Reply