Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 106622
(NET R8169) MTU size can't change larger than 1500 with ifconfig command
Last modified: 2013-07-02 22:15:49 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YComp 5.0.2.6) Description of problem: When I used ifconfig command to change MTU size for eth0, I can't change the value larger than 1500. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): RHEL3-RC1 AS How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.type 'ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000 2. 3. Actual Results: It gives you a message : SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument Expected Results: You can change the value of MTU size Additional info:
You need to give a lot more information, such as * kernel version * NIC hardware description * 'lspci' output * 'dmesg' output It may be that your hardware doesn't support jumbo MTUs.
Bug: Redhat ifconfig does not allow you to forcefully set the MTU > 1500. The reason this is bad is that if you have a gigabit ethernet card on a gig-network you should be able to set it higher for better throughput. I am using a gigbit NIC from hawking. Using drivers r8169. I saw some things in the driver source file about giga ethernet but it wasn't clear and anyway the variable was set to 1536 which doesn't work either. Kernel is: 2.4.18-19.7.x
I think this would be fixed by updating r8169 driver to latest 2.4.x-BK.
This bug is filed against RHEL 3, which is in maintenance phase. During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission critical bug fixes will be released for enterprise products. Since this bug does not meet that criteria, it is now being closed. For more information of the RHEL errata support policy, please visit: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ If you feel this bug is indeed mission critical, please contact your support representative. You may be asked to provide detailed information on how this bug is affecting you.