Sun Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Considerations

Some Gigabit Ethernet switches require some device parameter values to be set differently than the defaults. Chapter 3 of the Sun Gigabit Ethernet/P 2.0 Adapter Installation and User's Guide describes the procedure about how to change device parameters. If you are using an operating system earlier than the Solaris 10 OS, the procedure that you use on nodes that are running Sun Cluster software varies slightly from the procedure that is described in the guide. In particular, the difference is in how you derive parent names for use in the ge.conf file from the /etc/path_to_inst file.

Chapter 3 of the Sun Gigabit Ethernet/P 2.0 Adapter Installation and User's Guide describes the procedure on how to change ge device parameter values. This change occurs through entries in the /kernel/drv/ge.conf file. The procedure to derive the parent name from the /etc/path_to_inst listing, which is be used in ge.conf entries, appears in Setting Driver Parameters Using a ge.conf File. For example, from the following /etc/path_to_inst line, you can derive the parent name for ge2 to be /pci@4,4000.

"/pci@4,4000/network@4" 2 "ge"

On Sun Cluster nodes, a /node@nodeid prefix appears in the /etc/path_to_inst line. Do not consider the /node@nodeid prefix when you derive the parent name. For example, on a cluster node, an equivalent /etc/path_to_inst entry would be the following:

"/node@1/pci@4,4000/network@4" 2 "ge"

The parent name for ge2, to be used in the ge.conf file is still /pci@4,4000 in this instance.