SuSE 11.4 - VLANs cause x86-64 system using e1000e module to hang on boot

Hello,

Recently, I decided to migrate from SuSE 11.2 to 11.4. My 11.2 installation was working fine with two VLANs and several VMs.

I went the route of installing 11.4 from scratch rather than upgrading 11.2.

The installation went smoothly. Afterwards, I ran Yast and changed eth0 to a bonding interface. Then I added two VLANs that used the bonding interface.

When I restarted the computer, I saw the following on the console:

“Waiting for mandatory devices vlan3005 NSC”. Then after a 30 second countdown:

“vlan3005 no interface found”.

The solution to that problem was to add “ETHERDEVICE=‘eth0’” to /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0.3005".

Upon restarting the computer, I could see that DHCP started this time but didn’t get an IP address and continued in the background while the rest of the console messages scrolled by. At the point where X kicks in and I should have gotten a GUI login window, the screen goes dark. I cannot get to a console (CTRL-ALT-F1 or F2) or any other GUI login window (CTRL-ALT-F7 F8 or F9).

The computer was completely unresponsive. I could not ssh in to it from another host nor could I ping it. I let it sit for a few minutes but nothing ever appeared on the console. There were no blinking lights on the keyboard. I had to power the computer off.

I turned off VLAN trunking on the switch port and the computer booted up fine, without network access, of course. I checked the logs but could find no clues as to what happened.

I suspect a kernel problem. However, before I proceed further, I thought I would post my problem here and see if anyone has had a similar problem and perhaps a solution.

Cheers!
Trevor

Hello,

Recently, I decided to migrate from SuSE 11.2 to 11.4. My 11.2 installation was working fine with two VLANs and several VMs.

I went the route of installing 11.4 from scratch rather than upgrading 11.2.

The installation went smoothly. Afterwards, I ran Yast and changed eth0 to a bonding interface. Then I added two VLANs that used the bonding interface.

When I restarted the computer, I saw the following on the console:

“Waiting for mandatory devices vlan3005 NSC”. Then after a 30 second countdown:

“vlan3005 no interface found”.

The solution to that problem was to add “ETHERDEVICE=‘eth0’” to /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0.3005".

Upon restarting the computer, I could see that DHCP started this time but didn’t get an IP address and continued in the background while the rest of the console messages scrolled by. At the point where X kicks in and I should have gotten a GUI login window, the screen goes dark. I cannot get to a console (CTRL-ALT-F1 or F2) or any other GUI login window (CTRL-ALT-F7 F8 or F9).

The computer was completely unresponsive. I could not ssh in to it from another host nor could I ping it. I let it sit for a few minutes but nothing ever appeared on the console. There were no blinking lights on the keyboard. I had to power the computer off.

I turned off VLAN trunking on the switch port and the computer booted up fine, without network access, of course. I checked the logs but could find no clues as to what happened.

I suspect a kernel problem. However, before I proceed further, I thought I would post my problem here and see if anyone has had a similar problem and perhaps a solution.

Cheers!
Trevor
Could it be video related? What is your video hardware? Did you try the the kernel load option nomodeset, entered just before you press the enter key in the Grub menu to select your normal openSUSE kernel startup? If it works, it can be added as a normal startup and the same option already exists in Failsafe, among several other options there.

Thank You,

I doubt that it is video related since if I turn off trunking on the switch port, the computer boots fine.

I have not tried the nomodeset kernel load option.

At this point, I have installed SuSE 11.3 instead. My VLANs work as they did in SuSE 11.2.

I have seen one similar problem reported in the bugs forum.

So, I think I’ll wait and see if this problem is resolved in a future release.

Trevor

Same problem here. Did a fresh installation of 11.4 and configured vlan interfaces using yast network settings. After the initial configuration, the vlans worked and things seemed fine, but then Yast started acting strange, at first it would not load the network settings, it would hang during when trying to load the network interfaces, eventually I just killed it. Then the Yast gui would be invisible, like the buttons were still working in yast, but the gui was not there (so freaking weird).

When I go to log out, all the gnome panels go away, icons on the desktop go, but the background stays on the screen. I can’t move the mouse, numlock on the keyboard does not respond. I have to power off my system manually.

The behavior described above is the same when using vconfig to add vlan interfaces.

So I removed the vlan config, now 11.4 works fine, no problems. I’ve come to depend on vlan functionality, and will also fall back to 11.3 if I must. I know it worked in 11.3, thats where i just came from! This is the only forum I’ve found that describes this issue.

No clue where to begin with troubleshooting the problem, but I’m willing to try if someone has ideas.

Where was that bug report at?

Update: nomodeset did not effect the issue

This is the (onboard) nic:
Intel Corporation 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 02)