Linux – Why is ethtool not showing me all the properties for a NIC

centosethtoollinuxnic

CentOS 5.8 | VMWare ESX 5.1

When I run ethtool eth0 I see the following: 

[root@foo ~]# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
         Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
         Link detected: yes

Is there any way to get the rest of the details? Particularly speed and duplex? I'm used to ethtool output being more verbose. For example: 

# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
        Supported ports: [ TP ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 100Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 1
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: d
        Wake-on: d
        Link detected: yes

I'm wondering if this is related to running on a VMWare platform? Current adapter type in ESX is "Flexible" and VMWare tools is not installed on the server.

Best Answer

I would imagine it doesn't report any of the PHY settings because there aren't any, there is no link mode, not autoneg, no fixed speed, no port or cabling type, no transceiver, etc. when using the paravirtual driver

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