The problem is alot worse that I thought. I ran the 'test net' after I did the 'stop a' thing and the system worked once, but the second time it froze. No matter what i tried I couldn't get the system out of a frozen state so I had to cycle the power.

I thought lemme check the entire system to see what's going on, so I did a "test scsi" which did nothing for a few seconds and then I was flooded with a "bus fault" message. The system seemed to keep on generating this message and it was stuck in this loop. Again, I had to cycle the power to get a functioning system.

While I am writing this, I tried this one more time. After I cycled the power the link light blinked on on my switch. I ran the 'test net' and everything seemed to check out. When I tried to run it again, the loopback test succeeded but the transceiver test failed with a return code = -1.

I've tried the 'test scsi' which doesn't seem to give any errors right now.

I'm completely lost here. I dunno what I should do. I'm thinking that the hardware is probably faulty which means the guy I bought it from ripped me off.

observation
maybe this isn't entirely true, but i've noticed, that when I do a 'stop a' right after I boot the system I can run the test w/o an error or lockup (although, I seem to only be able to run 'test net' once, after that I get an error or the system freezes), BUT after the system does the filesystem cleanup (from the power off) and brings the integrated nic up, i get error messages.

Does something happen that results in these errors? If someone could explain the bootup workings of an Ultra10 i'd really appreciate it.

The following is the original message I posted:

I'm getting odd problems with my Ultra10's integrated ethernet port.

It seems that the unit works intermittantly. Today it took about 5 minutes before the port light was lit on my switch.

I disconnected the cable and then reconnected it and now the light is off.

Any ideas on this one? Is it hardware failure or is it a setting in Solaris 8 that requires the port to be activated or requires something to happen before the port becomes active?