X8SIA-F Solaris problems

[Metaluna]

Is anyone here using a Supermicro X8SIA-F with either Solaris 11 Express, OpenIndiana, or Nexenta?

When I boot the live CD for the latest versions of any of these, the Intel ethernet driver (e1000g) seems to have problems recognizing either of the dual onboard NICs. The driver looks like it loads, but there is no connectivity. I can't get a DHCP address or ping anything.

When I boot the same ISO images on an almost identical system with an X8SIL-F, the network comes up fine. Also, FreeBSD 8.x and Ubuntu 10.10 work fine with the X8SIA-F.

I did have a problem with a corrupted BIOS flash on this particular X8SIA-F a while back, which I thought I fixed, but now I'm wondering if maybe some device ID string is still bad and is confusing the driver.

 

[nitrobass24]

Yea i would try a BIOS update again. The X8SIA-f is basically the big brother(ATX) to the X8SIL-F, so it shouldn't be any different.
I would also check your BIOS NIC settings, actually just load system defaults to be sure.

 

[PigLover]

I had problems with the NICs on one of my X8SIA-Fs. Randomly, every few weeks, one or both of them would just lock up under Server2008. The other board running similar systems works rock solid. A BIOS flash (1.0b) seems to have fixed it.

Make sure you flash the right BIOS. Brother or not, the X8SIA and X8SIL seem to have different BIOS.

 

[Metaluna]

Thanks nitrobass24! I did a BIOS "Reset to failsafe defaults" and that seems to have fixed it, for now anyway. I'm going to install SE11 and rsync a few TB of data over to it to see what happens. I didn't take note of all the BIOS settings that changed when I did the reset, but one of the ones I noticed was that VT-d reverted from Enabled to Disabled, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I too have occasionally seen some weird behavior on this motherboard from time to time, which is why my main home server now runs on an X8SIL-F. In fact, now that I think of it, it was unstable Ethernet behavior that prompted me to flash to 1.0b, which was when I accidentally corrupted the BIOS (long story). The problem could not be corrected by just reflashing 1.0b for some reason. So I then had to e-mail Tech Support to get a copy of 1.0a, flash back to that, and then finally back to 1.0b again.