[arch-general] forcing speed/duplex on Intel e1000 driver

[Chuck Remes]

On Jan 6, 2008, at 5:46 PM, Jesse Young wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 17:14:17 -0600, Chuck Remes wrote:
>> A service provider has forced all of their switch ports to 100/ 
>> full. I need
>> to do the same on a box running archlinux x86_64 w/kernel 2.6.22- 
>> ARCH and
>> the Intel e1000 driver.
>>
>> I edited /etc/modprobe.conf to contain these lines:
>>
>> e1000 Speed=100,100,100,100
>> e1000 Duplex=2,2,2,2
>>
>> However, the messages in /var/log/kernel.log indicate the  
>> interfaces are
>> still coming up as 100/half which implies they are still attempting  
>> to
>> autonegotiate and failing therefore defaulting to 100 (which can be  
>> sensed)
>> and half-duplex (which can't be sensed, so this is the default).
>>
>> What's the best way to force the driver into 100/full on boot?
>
> I have a similar situation at school, except I'm forced to 10/full :(
> I use ethtool in /etc/rc.local. This may or may not work for you,
> depending if you can successfully DHCP at 100/half. In this case add  
> the
> ethtool line in /etc/rc.d/network before you attempt to DHCP.
>
> ethtool -s INTERFACE  speed 100 duplex full autoneg off

My box also had a Broadcom NIC in it which did not support any options  
via modprobe.conf so I had to use your suggestion. I ended up editing / 
etc/rc.local like so:

# this forces the built-in broadcom NIC to 100/full
mii-tool --force=100baseTx-FD eth0

I'm glad both of you chose to respond!