FC6 upgrade killed networking

[lhouk]

We're running a Dell PowerEdge 2650 with two Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5703X Gigabit ethernet interfaces. Until last Friday, it was running quite happily on FC4. However, after we upgraded to FC6, the network interfaces no longer work. When the system booted and tried to bring up eth0, it said "tg3 device eth0 does not seem to be present". I deleted and recreated all the ifcfg-eth* files, which made the above message stop appearing and eth0 appear to start successfully (status "OK" on boot), but it still doesn't work. The only IP address I can ping is 127.0.0.1.

The strange thing is, if I boot from the FC6 Rescue CD, the network works just fine. In fact, I used this method to do "yum -y update" after the install, just to see if getting the current versions of the kernel and other files would make a difference, but it didn't. (FYI, the kernel I'm now running is 2.6.20-1.2933.fc6).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might resolve this problem? If I can't fix my existing install, is there any way I can totally redo my network hardware and software configuration, so that I'm coming up with the network configuration created for me when I used the Rescue CD? Reformatting my disks and doing a clean install isn't an option, but a clean network install is a possibility, if such as thing exists.

Thanks in advance to all who respond.

[immolatus]

Originally Posted by lhouk

We're running a Dell PowerEdge 2650 with two Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5703X Gigabit ethernet interfaces. Until last Friday, it was running quite happily on FC4. However, after we upgraded to FC6, the network interfaces no longer work. When the system booted and tried to bring up eth0, it said "tg3 device eth0 does not seem to be present". I deleted and recreated all the ifcfg-eth* files, which made the above message stop appearing and eth0 appear to start successfully (status "OK" on boot), but it still doesn't work. The only IP address I can ping is 127.0.0.1.

The strange thing is, if I boot from the FC6 Rescue CD, the network works just fine. In fact, I used this method to do "yum -y update" after the install, just to see if getting the current versions of the kernel and other files would make a difference, but it didn't. (FYI, the kernel I'm now running is 2.6.20-1.2933.fc6).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might resolve this problem? If I can't fix my existing install, is there any way I can totally redo my network hardware and software configuration, so that I'm coming up with the network configuration created for me when I used the Rescue CD? Reformatting my disks and doing a clean install isn't an option, but a clean network install is a possibility, if such as thing exists.

Thanks in advance to all who respond.

I had a similar problem that began with an update to the 2.6.20x kernel version. What you describe here sounds like some absentee firmware, all of wich I'm sure you can find on sourceforge.org. Maybe if you use the live cd to download the firmware to a disk or usb device and then manualy install them in /lib/firmware.......do
code:
ifdown devicename
modprobe devicename
ifup devicename

It might kickstart at least one of the interfaces. You might also wont to check the supported hardware list on the wiki.
my situation occured when I updated from a 2.6.19x kernel to 2.6.20x, it totaly ignored my wireless card (ipw2200) wich is very comon. but once I kicked it over (so to speak) It has worked fine. The only problem I still find is that the current kernel version doesn't seem to play nice with wep or wepa encription, so I've been using MAC filtering as security instead.

I look forward to hearing the resolusion to this problem.....

[lhouk]

Originally Posted by immolatus

I look forward to hearing the resolusion to this problem.....

Sorry, but this won't be very informative. Our management made an executive decision, and we attached a tape drive to the system, backed up all the user data, did a clean install of FC6, and then restored from the tapes.

[nimbius]

any luck? you may want to doublecheck your bios and see if there is any voodoo going on with those interfaces. I have to broadcom gbnics on my HP Proliant that give me trouble in Xen, but none to your extent.

dmesg output of the rescuedisk and of the initial boot would be nice (are we detecting the devices and not doing anything for a reason?)