How to tell if NICs have link light?

[ttblum]

Hello,

I just installed an Intel quad NIC into my server, and I'm trying to see which NICs (em2, em3, etc.) match what physical ports on the NIC card so that I can assign them to the correct VLANs.

I was going to just unplug NIC cards and see which NIC lost a link light, but I'm not seeing any change:

Code:

em5: flags=8c02<BROADCAST,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=4019b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,VLAN_HWTSO>
    ether 00:15:17:7c:bc:82
    nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
    media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
    status: active

Is there a way to do this, or do this some other way? I'm using a Cisco Catalyst switch, maybe try disabling NICs on FreeNAS server and see what ports go down on the switch? Are the quad NICs generally numbered from top to bottom?

Code:

em5@pci0:11:0:1:    class=0x020000 card=0x11bc8086 chip=0x10bc8086 rev=0x06 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
    cap 01[c8] = powerspec 2  supports D0 D3  current D0
    cap 05[d0] = MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit enabled with 1 message
    cap 10[e0] = PCI-Express 1 endpoint max data 128(256) link x4(x4)
                 speed 2.5(2.5) ASPM disabled(L0s)

 

[dlavigne]

Which solution did you end up with?

 

[ttblum]

Only after I assigned IP addresses to the NICs did they then start showing 'active' and 'no carrier' statuses (in both the command line and GUI). I issued 'no shutdown' and 'shutdown' commands for their connected switchports and their statuses were changing appropriately.

It showed that my NICs were indeed numbered from top to bottom.