*BSD News Article 87925


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From: Vince Kub <vince@gw2kbbs.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: 2.2-Beta FDDI Broken?
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:49:35 -0600
Organization: Avalon Networks Inc.
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  Greetings, 

   I had occasion to try and install the 2.2-Beta on a P5-120 machine
that, for various reasons, needed to exist on a FDDI ring. I was using the
DEC PCI DEFPA controller (dual attached fiber, revision E01 of the card) 
and while I could compile a kernel that would recognize the controller and
insert into the ring I wasn't able to do anything very useful with it.
Attempting to ping other hosts on the ring or examine ARP tables showed
nothing.

  Now, where it gets interesting is that if I did a "tcpdump -i fpa0" all
the packets flowing by were there for inspection and, of course, after
doing this the ARP table showed the proper addresses for the machines that
had been seen passing traffic. I still couldn't ping even hosts (now) in
the ARP table. 

 To add insult to injury, when I finally gave up and installed BSDI 2.1 on
the exact same box with precisely the same hardware configuration all was
well. I really wanted to use my beloved FreeBSD platform for this
application but the job had to get done today and so getting a FreeBSD
platform up on FDDI now becomes a lab project. <sigh>

   So - what do the gurus think? It's obvious that the fpa driver worked
well enough for tcpdump but not well enough to actually get as far up the
stack as "practical" applications (even ICMP). Clearly nothing very wrong
with the hardware involved (I can supply any details that might be
relevant). I guess I have to wonder if anyone has had FreeBSD up on a FDDI
ring lately or is this one that got through the field tests? 



Vince Kub
System/Network Admin. 
Gateway 2000
Online Information Network