Solaris NIC speed and duplex settings

The following is a Bourne shell script I wrote to determine the speed and duplex settings
for all active network interfaces on a Solaris system. Thanks to William Favorite for
fixing the script to work with two-letter network interfaces (e.g. ge0), and to Royce
Williams for providing a patch to exclude subinterface information.
Download the script.
Example output:
Interface
--------hme0
hme1
hme2

Speed
----100 Mbit/s
100 Mbit/s
100 Mbit/s

Duplex
-----full
full
full

Setting NIC speed and duplex

Solaris is often unable to correctly auto-negotiate duplex settings with a link partner (e.g.
switch), especially when the switch is set to 100Mbit full-duplex. You can force the NIC
into 100Mbit full-duplex by disabling auto-negotiation and 100Mbit half-duplex
capability.
Example with hme0:
1. Make the changes to the running system.
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100hdx_cap 0
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100fdx_cap 1
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_autoneg_cap 0
2. Make kernel parameter changes to preserve the speed and duplex settings after a
reboot.
# vi /etc/system
Add:
# set hme:hme_adv_autoneg_cap=0
# set hme:hme_adv_100hdx_cap=0
# set hme:hme_adv_100fdx_cap=1
Note: the /etc/system change affects all hme interfaces if multiple NICs are present
(e.g. hme0, hme1).
More information:
http://www.science.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2/Q4.13.html

The /etc/system settings listed above are not supported for configuring ce Ethernet
adapters during system startup; you may either use ndd commands in an /etc/rc?.d
script or create a /platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/ce.conf file with appropriate
settings.
Example: /etc/init.d/nddconfig
#!/bin/sh
ndd
ndd
ndd
ndd
ndd
ndd
ndd
ndd

-set
-set
-set
-set
-set
-set
-set
-set

/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce
/dev/ce

instance 0
adv_1000fdx_cap 0
adv_1000hdx_cap 0
adv_100fdx_cap 1
adv_100hdx_cap 0
adv_10fdx_cap 0
adv_10hdx_cap 0
adv_autoneg_cap 0

# ln -s /etc/init.d/nddconfig /etc/rc2.d/S31nddconfig
$ dmesg | grep ce0
Jan 20 11:05:01 crmmdb22 genunix: [ID 611667 kern.info]
NOTICE: ce0: xcvr addr:0x01 - link up 100 Mbps half duplex
Jan 20 11:05:15 crmmdb22 genunix: [ID 408822 kern.info]
NOTICE: ce0: no fault external to device; service available
Jan 20 11:05:15 crmmdb22 genunix: [ID 611667 kern.info]
NOTICE: ce0: xcvr addr:0x01 - link up 100 Mbps full duplex

Manually determining NIC speed and duplex

If you have ce or bge interfaces, use kstat ce and kstat bge, respectively, to
return NIC settings. All other interfaces may use ndd to determine NIC settings.
ndd example with hme0, assuming "instance" is 0:
# ndd -get /dev/hme link_mode
Interpretation:
0 -- half-duplex
1 -- full-duplex
# ndd -get /dev/hme link_speed
Interpretation:
0 -- 10 Mbit
1 -- 100 Mbit
1000 -- 1 Gbit

To query a different NIC, such as hme1, set the "instance" to 1, and then perform the
link_mode and link_speed queries above.
# ndd -set /dev/hme instance 1
Note: the ndd commands above must be run as root. Otherwise, you will receive errors
such as "couldn't push module 'hme0', No such device or address."

ce Ethernet adapters
Older versions of the Sun GigaSwift Ethernet 1.0 driver do not support the ndd
link_mode and link_speed parameters. You may either install the latest Sun
GigaSwift Ethernet adapter patch (111883) or you may use kstat ce ce_device to
get speed and duplex information for ce Ethernet adapters.
For example (from http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9142/sam0405l/0405l.htm):
$ netstat -k ce | egrep 'link_speed|link_status|link_duplex'
Interpretation:
link_up - 0 down, 1 up
link_speed - speed in Mbit/s
link_duplex - 1 half duplex, 2 full duplex, 0 down

Host/link partner mismatch example

A large number of output errors or collisions may indicate a host and link partner
mismatch. The following is netstat -in output from a system configured for 100
half-duplex while the switch was configured for 100 full-duplex.
Name Mtu
Net/Dest
Address
Ipkts
Ierrs Opkts
Oerrs
Collis
Queue
ce0
1500 192.168.1.0
192.168.1.1 2707133478 25
2895422910
142310052 182856975 0
In this example, the switch was configured for 100 half-duplex and the system was
configured for 100 full-duplex. Note the percentage of Ierrs/Ipkts (~ 1.7%).
Name Mtu
Net/Dest
Address
Ierrs Opkts
Oerrs
Collis
qfe1 1500 10.0.0.0
10.0.0.3
1779341
0
0
0

CHANGELOG

Ipkts
Queue
1430247

24663

2007/07/10 -- Added e1000g interfaces

2006/11/29 -- Added dmfe interfaces, fixed bge and ce
interfaces, many other modifications and fixes.
2006/04/27 -- Solaris 7 and earlier include subinterface
information with netstat -i. Patch by Royce Williams to only
query physical NIC interfaces.
2006/03/09 -- Fixed bge interfaces, added support for iprb
interfaces, added "support" for le interfaces, modified
script to only require root access if using /usr/sbin/ndd to
determine NIC speed and duplex settings
2005/05/25 -- Fixed ce interface handling.
2004/09/15 -- Added support for ce and bge interfaces.
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Last modified: 2007/07/10