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.TH MII-DIAG 8 "September 9, 2003" "Scyld Beowulf\[tm]"

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.SH NAME

mii-diag \- Network adapter control and monitoring

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B mii-diag

.RI [ options ] <interface>

.SH DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the

.B mii-diag

network adapter control and monitoring command.

Addition documentation is available from http://scyld.com/diag/index.html.

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.PP

This \fBmii-diag\fP command configures, controls and monitors the

transceiver management registers for network interfaces, and configures

driver operational parameters.  For transceiver control \fBmii-diag\fP

uses the Media Independent Interface (MII) standard (thus the command name).

It also has additional Linux-specific controls to communicate parameters

such as message enable settings and buffer sizes to the underlying device

driver.

.PP

The MII standard defines registers that control and report network

transceiver capabilities, link settings and errors.  Examples are link

speed, duplex, capabilities advertised to the link partner, status LED

indications and link error counters.

.SH OPTIONS

The \fBmii-diag\fP command supports both single character and long

option names.  Short options use a single dash (´-´) in front of the option

character.  For options without parameters, multiple options may be

concatenated after a single dash.  Long options are prefixed by two

dashes (´--´), and may be abbreviated with a unique prefix.

A long option may take a parameter of the form --arg=param or --arg param.

.PP

A summary of options is as follows.

.TP

.B \-A, --advertise <speed|setting>

.BR

.B \-F, --fixed-speed <speed|setting>

Speed is one of: 100baseT4, 100baseTx, 100baseTx-FD, 100baseTx-HD, 10baseT,

10baseT-FD, 10baseT-HD.  For more precise control an explicit numeric

register setting is also allowed.

.TP

.B \-a, \--all-interfaces

Show the status of all interfaces.  This option is not recommended with

any other option, especially ones that change settings.

.TP

.B \-s,\--status

Return exit status 2 if there is no link beat.

.TP

.B \-D

Increase the debugging level.  This may be used to understand the

actions the command is taking.

.TP

.B \-g, \--read-parameters

Show driver-specific parameters.

.TP

.B \-G, \--set-parameters value[,value...]

Set driver-specific parameters.

Set a adapter-specific parameters.

Parameters are comma separated, with missing elements retaining the

existing value.

.TP

.B \-v

Increase the verbosity level.  Additional "-v" options increase the

level further.

.TP

.B \-V

Show the program version information.

.TP

.B \-w, \--watch

Continuously monitor the transceiver and report changes.

.TP

.B \-?

Emit usage information.

.SH DESCRIPTION

.PP

Calling the command with just the interface name

produces extensive output describing the transceiver

capabilities, configuration and current status.

.PP

The '--monitor' option allows scripting link beat changes.

.PP

This option is similar to --watch, but with lower overhead and simplified

output.  It polls the interface only once a second and the output format

is a single line per link change with three fixed words

  <unknown|down||negotiating|up> <STATUS> <PARTNER-CAP>

.PP

Example output:  mii-diag --monitor eth0

   down         0x7809 0x0000

   negotiating  0x7829 0x45e1

   up           0x782d 0x45e1

   down         0x7809 0x0000

.PP

This may be used as

  mii-diag --monitor eth0 |

    while read linkstatus bmsr linkpar; do

     case $linkstatus in

        up)   ifup eth0 ;;

        down) ifdown eth0 ;;

     esac

    done

.PP

It may be useful to shorten the DHCP client daemon timeout if it does

not receive an address by adding the following setting to

/etc/sysconfig/network:

DHCPCDARGS="-t 3"

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR ether-wake (8), net-diag (8), mii-tool (8).

.br

Addition documentation is available from http://scyld.com/diag/index.html.

.SH KNOWN BUGS

The --all-interfaces option is quirky.  There are very few settings that

are usefully applied to all interfaces.

.SH AUTHOR

The manual pages, diagnostic commands, and many of the underlying Linux

network drivers were written by Donald Becker for the Scyld

Beowulf(\*(Tm) cluster system.