Identify physical port given a network interface name on Dell PowerEdge servers?

[Pallav Bose]

Thank you, John. Yes, dmidecode works perfectly for onboard NICs, but I wasn't able to obtain precise information about a NIC connected via a PCI slot. All I can see is that the PCI bus is in use and its address.
In the output below, there is an Intel 10G NIC in PCI slot 6.

# dmidecode -t slot
# dmidecode 2.10
SMBIOS 2.8 present.

Handle 0x0900, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 1
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: Available
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported

Handle 0x0901, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 2
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: Available
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported

Handle 0x0902, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 3
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: Available
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported

Handle 0x0903, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 4
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: In Use
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported
        Bus Address: 0000:82:00.0

Handle 0x0904, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 5
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: Available
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported

Handle 0x0905, DMI type 9, 17 bytes
System Slot Information
        Designation: PCIe Slot 6
        Type: x8 <OUT OF SPEC>
        Current Usage: In Use
        Length: Long
        Characteristics:
                3.3 V is provided
                PME signal is supported
        Bus Address: 0000:04:00.0

# pciconf -bclv | grep -E "ix|bge"
ix0 at pci0:4:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x50038086 chip=0x15288086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
ix1 at pci0:4:0:1: class=0x020000 card=0x50038086 chip=0x15288086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
bge0 at pci0:2:0:0:        class=0x020000 card=0x1f5b1028 chip=0x165f14e4 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
bge1 at pci0:2:0:1:        class=0x020000 card=0x1f5b1028 chip=0x165f14e4 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
bge2 at pci0:1:0:0:        class=0x020000 card=0x1f5b1028 chip=0x165f14e4 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
bge3 at pci0:1:0:1:        class=0x020000 card=0x1f5b1028 chip=0x165f14e4 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00

 I can't tell whether ix0 at pci0:4:0:0 is the first port on the Intel card or the second.

Regards,Pallav 

    On Tuesday, March 29, 2016 3:56 PM, John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net> wrote:
 

 
> On Mar 29, 2016, at 4:44 PM, John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Mar 29, 2016, at 3:42 PM, Pallav Bose via freebsd-net <freebsd-net at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Is there a way for me to identify which physical port corresponds to a given interface name? For example, the input to my script/program is the network interface name, like bge0/ix0, and the output is the physical port which maps to this interface, like, LOM1/LOM2 or NIC1 port 1 (in case a NIC card is attached via the PCI bus). This program/script will run on a Dell PowerEdge server.
>> 
>> LOM stands for LAN On Motherboard.
> 
> It sounds like you're looking for something like Dell's biosdevname for Linux. I don't think such a thing exists on FreeBSD, but if you can figure out how to get it the same data should be available from the BIOS. I would start by scrutinizing the output of "dmidecode"; if it's in there then you can just parse it out for your script. If not, you can always dive through the source of biosdevname:
> 
> http://linux.dell.com/git/biosdevname.git/

See also:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Networking_Guide/sec-Consistent_Network_Device_Naming_Using_biosdevname.html#sec-Consistent_Network_Device_Naming-System_Requirements

I don't have access to a Dell box running FreeBSD but on a PowerEdge server running CentOS 6 this command looks like it returned all the raw info you would need to implement your own "biosdevname-lite". Specifically you could map the NIC number from the "Reference Designation" to its PCI bus address and then call it whatever you wanted:

# dmidecode -t 41
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.6 present.

Handle 0x2900, DMI type 41, 11 bytes
Onboard Device
    Reference Designation: Embedded NIC 1                          
    Type: Ethernet
    Status: Enabled
    Type Instance: 1
    Bus Address: 0000:01:00.0

Handle 0x2901, DMI type 41, 11 bytes
Onboard Device
    Reference Designation: Embedded NIC 2                          
    Type: Ethernet
    Status: Enabled
    Type Instance: 2
    Bus Address: 0000:01:00.1
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