For any of you Sun guys out there... I initially posted
this to fishsponge ;< Sorry. So, to take advantage of
the forum;

I have an SS5; it was running Solaris 9 when I acquired
it, with no problems that I could detect. I bought a
box of Solaris 7 Server, and did an 'initial' install.
I messed with some eeprom settings at some point after
that. I [suddenly] have no link on eth0. Reinstalled Solaris 9, still nothing. ifconfig says that it is up and running, loopback works (ping), but no link light and no signal. It's been suggested that it could be a hardware problem, but I have a feeling _I_ screwed something up...Can anyone suggest a course of action? The machine worked
so well when I got it....

Thanks,

If you reckon you messed up the eeprom, how about a "set-defaults" at OBP?
I can't see why any of the settings there would screw anything partially though - the only settings I can think of would cause the device to be _totally_ ignored.

Does it link momentarily at OBP?
(not 100% sure all these commands are included in early OBP revs)
If so, hit STOP+A and
- setenv auto-boot? false
- reset-all
- show-nets (choose one)
- watch-net ^Y
...you should see dots for valid ethernet data recvd. All this will do is prove its a software/configuration problem.

No joy with that? you should set "diag-level" to max, reset the machine and do a "show-post-results" - assuming you don't use the serial console. If it says "POST not run on last reboot" some machines require a keyboard sequence during boot to force an extended POST to be run - no idea what this is for SS but I'm sure you'll find it listed on docs.sun.com or scumsolve/infoserver.

Also you may have screwed with autonegotiation/cabability settings - which aren't supposed to persist. See the ndd man page - the driver instance name is probably /dev/le

Rob

Hey all;

[Sheepishly] Well, for the benefit of all, I'll document my
progress with this problem. I powered up the box, and did:

Stop-a right away, which left me at the prompt

ok

I typed 'help' like the banner suggested, and was presented
with a number of common help topics, one of which was

Ethernet

so I typed 'help ethernet' and was persented with a few
bits, nothing particularly helpful, mostly about the
tpe-test-link? parameter...

back to help, and then 'help diag' for diagnostics, right?
I saw a simple utility called test-aui/test-tpe. (No link
light at this time), so i tried it, and

BAM! test-tpe: internal loopback successful
test-tpe: external loopback successful

I looked down, and there was light...., so now I'm on to
reinstall Solaris 7 Server, another can of worms for me to
pick through! [Mmmmm, them's good worms!]

Thanks for your help, fellas! Next time I'll try not to be
such a lunkhead. Is it just me, or does the inside of a
Sun box remind you of a Mercedes....what a sleek machine.

--
bsdaemon