Intel 82598EB twinax cables

[Dean E. Weimer]

I am trying to utilize an old Dell R710 server that used to be in our 
ESX cluster. To replace an even older FreeBSD server I have been 
running. Because it's pretty stupid to throw massively better system in 
the recycle pile while keeping the slower system online.

The problem I have is that the new server has 10G Ethernet adapters 
connected with Cisco Twinax Cables.

Adapters are Intel 8259EB 10Gigabit AF Dual Port Adapters

We have Cisco Twinax Cables connecting them to an Avaya VSP 7000 series 
switch

However I have been unable to get the interfaces to show any status 
other than no carrier. I have tried everything including building a 
custom kernel without the if_ix device and compiling the latest version 
from Intel and installing that.

I have done an up command on the interfaces, tried setting an IP, but 
nothing changes the status. Am I missing something or is the FreeBSD 
Driver just not compatible with these Twinax Cables? The cards of course 
were used with these cables on VMWare?

Here is the output from some commands below, there maybe some errors I 
can't copy and past from the remote kvm console, so I had to type this 
from reading the screen. this is just the first of the 4 interfaces.

dmesg:
ix0: <Intel(R) PRO/10GbE PCI-Express Network Driver, Version - 3.2.17> 
Port 0xccc0-0ccdf mem 
0xdeb40000-0xdeb5ffff,0xdeb80000-0xdebbffff,0xdeb38000-0xdeb3fff irq 47 
at device 0.0 on pci11
ix0: Using MSI-X interrupts with 9 vectors
ix0: Ethernet address: 00:00:c9:85:33:22
ix0: PCI Express Bus: Speed 2.5GT/s Width x8

pciconf -lv:
ix0 at pci0:11:0:0:   class=0x020000 card=0xe41010df chip=0x10c68086 
rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
   vendor   = 'Intel Corporation'
   device   = '82598EV 10-Gigabit AF Dual Port Network Connection'
   class    = 'network'
   subclass = 'ethernet'

ifconfig -v ix0
ix0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> METRIC 0 MTU 
9000
   
options=e407bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,LRO,VLAN_HWTSO,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
   ether 00:00:c9:85:33:22
   hwaddr 00:00:c9:85:33:22
   nd6 options=29<PREFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
   media: Ethernet autoselect
   status: no carrier

-- 
Thanks,
    Dean E. Weimer
    http://www.dweimer.net/