Bad Connectx-2? Confirm my suspicions.

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herby

Active Member
Aug 18, 2013
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TLDR: HP Connectx-2 renders my Xenserver unstable. Problems goes away when the card is removed, or when replaced with a Dell single port Connectx-2.

Got this HP branded ConnectX-2 NIC: HP, 10GBE Dual Port PCIe Adapter 518001-001,516937-B21 REV A1 | eBay today and the Xenserver machine I put it in has become completely unstable. Locks up on shutdown with "INIT: no more processes left in this runlevel", crashes trying to do a fresh install, fails to show the little Connectx firmware message at POST like my working single port NIC. It is however recognized by the OS when added to the machine with Xenserver already installed.

I think the card's no good, but the symptoms seem really strange to me. I had a single port Dell branded Connectx-2 die on me and it just stopped showing up to the OS. I have another HP Connectx-2 and it's been no trouble at all.

Has anyone seen these cards fail like this? Am I overlooking anything in my troubleshooting?
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Rev A1 is the first revision of this card, maybe it's a hardware bug or something.
 

herby

Active Member
Aug 18, 2013
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Updated to the latest (2012) HP firmware for that card revision: Drivers & Software - HPE Support Center.

Still no love. After flashing mstflint showed firmware version as 2.9.1002 and lspci showed it in the xubuntu live cd I was using, and again after one reboot.

Now I have nothing. No more instability but the card can't be found by lspci in either xenserver (centos) or xubuntu. I have a couple newer Dell and HP board revision of the Connectx-2 and both work fine (plug and play) in FreeNAS and Xenserver so I don't think it's a driver issue.
 

herby

Active Member
Aug 18, 2013
187
53
28
Xubuntu 12.04.4 - Live CD boots but doesn't show the Connectx-2 card in lspci
Xubuntu 16.04.02 - Live CD fails to boot with the card installed
Xenserver (CentOS 5.10) - OS boots but doesn't show the Connectx-2 card in lspci

Going to contact the seller monday :(