iSeries: Native ethernet adapter not starting

Support knowledgebase (native_ethernet_problem)

Symptom:

The native ethernet adapter that was configured during installation is not starting properly.

Solution:

It is possible that you configured your native ethernet as the eth0 device and that device then got changed to a different device when virtual ethernet got started on reboot.

You can use the following steps to figure out what device your native ethernet adaptor device is and then use that information to properly configure the ethernet adaptor:

1. Figure out which device names are used by virtual ethernet:

cat /proc/iSeries/veth/* | grep eth

This will return something like:

Net device name: eth0
Net device name: eth1

These are the two virtual ethernet device names used on my system. So the native ethernet will be eth2 in my case.

2. Edit the data in rc.config:

vi /etc/rc.config

edit the line "NETDEV_X=eth0" to be "NETDEV_X=ethY" where "Y" is the number that you figured above. In my case I change NETDEV_0=eth0 to NETDEV_0=eth2

3. Edit the data in modules.conf:

vi /etc/modules.conf

here edit the line that says "alias eth0 pcnet32" to "alias ethY pcnet32". For me it is "alias eth2 pcnet32".

4. After these changes have been made one only needs to restart the system and the native ethernet should work properly.

One additional step that may be necessary is reconfiguring your default route if you set the default route to be over your native ethernet adaptor. This can be done using the following two steps:

To determine if your default route is over ethernet do the following command:

route -n

If the line that starts with 0.0.0.0 ends with "eth0" then you need to do the following two steps.

route del -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 gateway "your gateway"
route add default gw "your gateway"

Keywords: ISERIES, INSTALLATION, ETHERNET

Categories: iSeries

SDB-native_ethernet_problem, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 23. Apr 2002
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 23. Apr 2002 by rschmid (sdb_gen 1.40.0)