Reported by @mbosner via Slack.
After bootup VyOS will initialize the card with autoneg if not otherwise specified on the CLI.
If a user now issues:
set interfaces ethernet eth7 speed 40000 set interfaces ethernet eth7 duplex full
The setting is applied to the card if supported by the underlaying hardware.
When we now switch back to auto neg mode
set interfaces ethernet eth7 speed auto set interfaces ethernet eth7 duplex auto
We will see on the debug logs:
DEBUG/IFCONFIG NIC driver does not support changing speed/duplex settings!
This is because the combination auto/auto is not on the default "allow list"