CentOS - Jun 2007 - How can I set NIC duplex before installation?

Hello,

I have installed CentOS 5 onto a server this afternoon using NFS. The
NFS 'server' has a 100Mb/full-duplex interface, the server I installed
CentOS on to has 4 x 100Mb interfaces. However, the installation was
painfully slow to start with, and by using ctrl-alt-f2/f4/f5 I could see
that contact with the NFS server was intermitently failing. Soon after
some of the packages had installed the 'ethtool' command was then
available, and I could see that the (installation) server NIC had been
set to 100Mb but at half-duplex. This was causing numerous collisions
and errors on the NIC interface. As soon as I reset the NIC to
full-duplex (via ctrl-alt-f2 and using ethtool), then the installation
speeded up and seemed to cause no more errors.

My question is, how can I tell anaconda to set the NIC interface options
such as speed and duplex? I have another server to install which has 2 x
gigabit NICs and 2 x 100MB NIC's. My concern is that anaconda will again
use wrong NIC parameters, and the installation will again be very slow.
Surely it is possible to set the NIC options?



John.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK  Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: John.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk       Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839

> My question is, how can I tell anaconda to set the NIC interface options
> such as speed and duplex? I have another server to install which has 2 x
> gigabit NICs and 2 x 100MB NIC's. My concern is that anaconda will
again
> use wrong NIC parameters, and the installation will again be very slow.
> Surely it is possible to set the NIC options?
On the boot line, use the following to set your first ethernet interface to use
100Mb/s full-duplex ethernet:

eth0_ethtool="autoneg=off speed=100 duplex=full"

Barry