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Date:      Mon, 5 Feb 2007 17:10:34 +0100
From:      Christoph Schug <chris+freebsd-questions@schug.net>
To:        Ewald Jenisch <a@jenisch.at>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: HP C-class Blade / Broadcom ethernet / SerDes controllers not supported
Message-ID:  <20070205161034.GB24367@voodoo.schug.net>
In-Reply-To: <20070205142743.GA4339@aurora.oekb.co.at>
References:  <20070205142743.GA4339@aurora.oekb.co.at>

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On Mon, Feb 05, 2007, Ewald Jenisch wrote:

> I'm trying to install FreeBSD 6.2 (AMD64-version) on a HP C-Class
> Blade system with the following specs:
> 
> Proliant BL465c 2x AMD Opteron 2.4GHz, 16GB RAM, 2x146 GB HDs in
> Raid1-config. During installation the NICs are not recognized. After
> reboot I get an error message in /var/log/messages like this:
> 
> "bce0: .... SerDes controllers are not supported!"

SerDes code isn't implemented in FreeBSD 6.2, but there has been a
commit in HEAD some days ago which should add this functionality to the
bce(4) driver [1].

Maybe you can give it a try and check whether a current FreeBSD 7 works
right and report back the result to the list. Unfortunately all of
my BL460c blades are in production right now (under Debian/GNU Linux
4/amd64 *sigh*), so I cannot verify it on my own at the moment. I guess
the chipsets of BL460c and BL465c are rather similar, despite the fact
that the ones in the BL460c are of BCM5708S type.

Output of one of my Linux blades regarding its ethernet NICs (the last
two lines are the NICs on the Mezzanine board):
| # lspci -nn | fgrep '[0200]'
| 03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708S Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:16ac] (rev 11)
| 07:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708S Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:16ac] (rev 11)
| 11:04.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme 5715S Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:1679] (rev a3)
| 11:04.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme 5715S Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:1679] (rev a3)

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/bce/if_bce.c.diff?r1=1.26&r2=1.27

> These NICs are listed as "HP NC 370i" in the blade configuration,
> internally they are "Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5706"s (at least this is
> what FreeBSD 6.2 tells me upon booting).

Another lesson to be learned: one should generally distrust any
marketing names like "NC 370i". For example, both the QuickSpecs of the
DL380 G5 [2] and BL460c [3] quote an "NC373i Multifunction Gigabit"
ethernet adapter. Nevertheless they are completely different by design
and while the one in the DL380 G5 works under FreeBSD 6.2, the one in
the BL460c doesn't. In the past I knew such confusing names just from
companies like Dell, but obviously HP adopted this bad habit recently
unless it is just a typo in the specs.

[2] http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_div/12477_div.html
[3] http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12518_div/12518_div.html

Hope this helps (although it's got rather off-topic in the end ;)
-cs




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