Intel X550T 2.5G Not Working
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@livegrenier 2.5 GiB is unusual. Have used X5xx series NICss before, but only at 1 or 10 GiB.
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@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...
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@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.
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@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
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@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
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@livegrenier Looks ok (with full height bracket). You might need to fix the heatsink on that card (check reviews).
The TPlink TX401 looks ok.
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@livegrenier The TP-Link TX201 uses the RTL8125 chipset.
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@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
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Just wanted to confirm I got that TX401 NIC and it's been working well so far on 2.5G
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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
