When you use the HMC to setup a virtual ethernet you need to specify a PVID. When I have access to an HMC again, I'll post a screenshot.

In any case, the VLAN connectivity between the client and the nim server must be working for any communication. During boot/install the client is VLAN unaware, so the setting will be PVID within the Power5.

There are additional issues that might be of concern when a server is outside the Power5 (managed system).

In a course for Power5 Virtualization I normally spend about 90 minutes on this lecture alone (as an indication that there is much to be said!)

Still need your settings. From what you have said, it should all work. Does ping to other systems work? With students the most frequent cause of failure is that the PVID is not set correctly. And most is viewable via HMC.

Please test with other partition, and if that is working, check with network administration.

And fropm the system when it is running - lsdev -C | grep ent

When confronted with situations like this I assume I am making an error somewhere. There are a multitude of tests to work down the process of elimination.

The first thing to verify is the adapter settings: speed (for virtual ethernet  shouldn't be settable), bit also check the protocol being used. From an installed system it will be standard ethernet (or en0), but the firmware starts with 802.3 (or et0).

The other 'first' thing to check is the profile setttings - verify that you have the virtual ethernet in the correct PVID lan. Booting is VLAN unaware, so while a running system can be VLAN aware, the install interface is not.

And, as I mentioned before: try pinging other things: other virtual ethernet adapters in same PVID based VLAN, other physical adapters accessible via shared ethernet adapter, and/or the IP address on the shared ethernet adapter of the VIO - if it has one.

well, there can be many things. If you are using a vio_server e.g., it may be that the shared ethernet adapter is not working correctly.

In my experience it is something really simple. As an alturnative, try pinging the default router, or another partition that you know is active and responding to ping requests.