Intel X550T 2.5G Not Working
-
@livegrenier That is correct. Intel officially does not officially support 2.5/5G on the x550 cards.
You can manually add the 2.5/5G advertisement, but it may not work correctly as the card does not fully support the standard.
Intel Readme for the driver with ethtool example.
-
Hi, @Andrew,
Wow thanks for the info, I'll try to return my card then, any ideas what's the best card to do 2.5G on xcp-ng? All I'm seeing is people with compatibility problems when I try to research this topic
Thanks
-
@livegrenier 2.5 GiB is unusual. Have used X5xx series NICss before, but only at 1 or 10 GiB.
-
@livegrenier Good question... Why not use 10G on the Intel? That would be the best choice. The intel x540 (1/10G) and newer are good choices for 10G cards.
I think it's worth just trying to manually enable the 2.5G speed on the 550 card. Intel does not support some required features of the NBASE-T standard, but it should still work ok. The x550 might need a NVM firmware update (available from intel or OEM).
Other milti-gig PCIe cards:
The Intel i225/i226 seems to work well, but it's not a 'server' chipset. There are true intel PCIe card, and many cheaper clones using the i225 chip. This is becoming a more common on-board ethernet chip and the driver has good Linux community testing and support.
The r8125 will also be supported, it's not a great choice. Again, desktop chipset. These are cheap for a reason. This chip is supported by the (not so great) vendor driver and is kind of an odd duck that needs to supported to bring XCP to a larger user base on cheaper hardware.
The AQC chipsets are used in many cards. The AQC107/108 is on the HCL and supported with the current driver. This is the only officially supported 2.5 ethernet by XenServer (but not XCP!). The newer cards (AQC113/etc) should be supported in the new alt driver available for easy manual install (soon). The different chipset support some range of 10M/100M/1G/2.5G/5G/10G.
While you can make USB ethernet work, stay away from them. Just say NO to USB...
-
@Andrew I was hoping to do 2.5Gb because that's what my pfsense can do.
Do you have any suggestions on forcing the speed? I attempted several things and it didn't seem to work.
I did update my firmware since so maybe it will work now, but if you have a suggestion that will survive a reboot ( I believe ethtool is not persistent) let me know.
Thanks.
-
@livegrenier ethtool is not persistent, you can add the command to run at startup.
Quoting the readme:
By default, devices based on the Intel(R) Ethernet Controller x550 do not advertise 2.5 Gbps or 5 Gbps. To have your device advertise these speeds, use the following: # ethtool -s <ethX> advertise N Where N is a combination of the following. 100baseTFull 0x008 1000baseTFull 0x020 2500baseTFull 0x800000000000 5000baseTFull 0x1000000000000 10000baseTFull 0x1000 For example, to turn on all modes: # ethtool -s <ethX> advertise 0x1800000001028So, use
ethtool -s ethX advertise 0x1800000001028
You may have to restart negotiation after the changeethtool -r ethX -
@Andrew unfortunately doesn't sound like a great option long term, you think this will work out of the box?
I'm looking for something with great support that will work for a long time, my current card doesn't sound like this going to be that unfortunately
-
@livegrenier Yes, the i226 should work, but that one is very expensive. Do you need two ports? The single port ones are cheap ($25us).
I have not tested one of the generic dual port i226 cards, I'll order one for testing (about $40us).
If you want an out-of-the-box known supported multi-gig card then you want an AQC107 ($64us, today).
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Aquantia Corp. AQC107 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet Controller [AQtion] (rev 02) driver: atlantic version: 2.0.3.0-kern firmware-version: 3.1.86 expansion-rom-version: bus-info: 0000:05:00.0 supports-statistics: yes supports-test: no supports-eeprom-access: no supports-register-dump: yes supports-priv-flags: no Settings for eth4: Supported ports: [ TP ] Supported link modes: 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full 10000baseT/Full 2500baseT/Full 5000baseT/Full Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Supported FEC modes: Not reported Advertised link modes: 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full 10000baseT/Full 2500baseT/Full 5000baseT/Full Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised FEC modes: Not reported Speed: 2500Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: on MDI-X: Unknown Link detected: yes -
@Andrew I really appreciate your ideas, I like the idea of paying less for just 1 port, you are right I do not need 2 ports.
I'm in Montreal so I have to use amazon.ca, the 10G card you link is not available in Canada but for the same price as the 2.5 dual nic card I can get this one:
That should work right? I just don't want to be returning a card every week
-
@livegrenier Looks ok (with full height bracket). You might need to fix the heatsink on that card (check reviews).
The TPlink TX401 looks ok.
-
-
@livegrenier The TP-Link TX201 uses the RTL8125 chipset.
-
@Andrew thanks, and I see the tx401 has a chipset AQC107, so I'll go with that if you think it's going to work out of the box, I'll probably put this project on hold for a moment, but as soon as I have a confirmation I'll update this post to let everyone know how it went, might take a few weeks but I will.
Thanks for the help
-
Just wanted to confirm I got that TX401 NIC and it's been working well so far on 2.5G
-
O olivierlambert marked this topic as a question on
-
O olivierlambert has marked this topic as solved on
-
I have been able to run a script at startup that enables 2.5g on the Intel X550. Here's how :
Create the script that will run at startup
nano /usr/local/bin/x550.shContent of x550.sh :
#!/usr/bin/bash sleep 1m ethtool -s eth1 advertise 0x1800000001028 echo `date +%F" "%T` "Startup script worked" >> /root/x550.logMake the script executable :
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/x550.shCreate the service that runs the script at startup
nano /etc/systemd/system/x550.serviceContent of x550.service :
[Unit] Description=Runs /usr/local/bin/x550.sh [Service] ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/x550.sh [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.targetEnable the service
systemctl enable x550Reboot and run this command to see if the link speed is 2.5g
ethtool ethX (replace X with yours)It should show this result :
Supported ports: [ TP ] Supported link modes: 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full 10000baseT/Full 2500baseT/Full 5000baseT/Full Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Supported FEC modes: Not reported Advertised link modes: 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full 10000baseT/Full 2500baseT/Full 5000baseT/Full Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised FEC modes: Not reported Speed: 2500Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: on MDI-X: Unknown Supports Wake-on: d Wake-on: d Current message level: 0x00000007 (7) drv probe link Link detected: yesYou can check the log file of your script located at /root/x550.log
I used this article to create everything :
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/replacing-rclocal-systemd
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login