Re: Problem with e1000e, 802.1Q VLAN's and IPMI

["Andrey Panin" <pazke@centrinvest.ru>]

On 208, 07 27, 2010 at 04:05:52 +0400, Andrey Panin wrote:
> On 207, 07 26, 2010 at 09:45:06AM -0700, Brandeburg, Jesse wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, 26 Jul 2010, Andrey Panin wrote:
> > > I have a problem using IPMI on Super Micro X7SBL motherboard (AOC-IPMI20-E BMC).
> > > BMC shares ethernet port with onboard e1000e. It works when IPMI traffic is 
> > > untagged (CrcStripping=0 module option used), but if I try to use 802.1Q vlan
> > > for IPMI traffic BMC stops responding right after "ifup eth0". 
> > 
> > We've heard of this issue (or similar) before.  I believe for the other 
> > guys they had to run IPMI traffic untagged, if your main network is 
> > running untagged.  The problem in this case is that the tags are being 
> > stripped in hardware even for the SMBUS packets, at which point the BMC 
> > that is stupid and doesn't understand offloading hardware gets confused 
> > that the traffic it is receiving doesn't have a vlan tag.
> 
> I suspected something like that. Unfortunately Super Micro isn't interested
> in fixing their BMC, at least latest firmware doesn't fix the issue.
> 
> > > I tested 2.6.26 (debian stable kernel) and 2.6.35-rc6.
> > > Looks like there is some problem with 802.1Q tags stripping/inserting.
> > 
> > Thanks for testing the latest kernel.
> > 
> > > There was no such problem with e1000 driver from 2.6.18.
> > 
> > Hm, that is an interesting statement.  The major changes to the driver 
> > include stripping tags all the time when not in promisc mode, and there 
> > have been some fixes and attempts to fix the ipmi issues some 
> > (particularly supermicro) BMCs have.  I'm quite surprised it worked for 
> > you at all (there have been quite a few issues in this area)
> 
> After some sleep I'm not so sure that it was really working :(
> I'll retest it more thoroughly this evening.

After retest I can confirm that tagged IPMI works with 2.6.18 e1000 driver.