rhel4 detects NICs in reverse on a 2950

[Sean Dilda]

David Sparks wrote:
> I too was annoyed by the incorrect labeling of the NIC ports, but I've
> got things sorted out now.  This is my guess as to how this happened.
> 

<snip>

>  The Windows driver team reversed the order of the ports in the driver.
>  This is why in Windows the NIC ports are in the correct order.  However
> the linux kernel team rejected this nonsense because these machines use
> the general Broadcom bnx2 driver that is being used by other vendors.
> Reversing the ports would affect everyone using Broadcom NeteXtreme2
> hardware.  So the linux change never happened.
> 
> That is why the ports are reversed in linux.  If you could get a vanilla
> Broadcom NeteXtreme2 driver loaded in Windows I'd bet that the ports
> would be reversed.
>

Err, have you read all the threads on this?  Please look here for a 
detailed explanation of what happened: 
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2006-July/026592.html

To summarize, its an issued caused by the combination of 1) the x9xx 
systems put the NICS on separate PCI buses, and 2) In 2.6 the linux 
kernel reversed its search order through the PCI buses.