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Date:      Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:54:31 +0100
From:      Karl Pielorz <kpielorz_lst@tdx.co.uk>
To:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   FreeBSD 9.0-R em0 issues?
Message-ID:  <26ABB168B4C8E32E7D127EF9@Octca64MkIV.tdx.co.uk>

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Hi,

Apologies for posting to -net as well - I originally posted this to 
-hackers, but was advised to re-post it here...

A FreeBSD 9.0-R amd64 box - based on a SuperMicro X8DTL-IF Rev. 2.01 
w/Intel  L5630 & 6Gb of RAM seems to have issues with it's onboard NIC (em 
driver based - i.e. em0).

The machine runs fine - but then suddenly loses all network connectivity. 
Nothing is logged on the console, or /var/log/messages.

Doing an 'infconfig em0 down' then up, doesn't fix it. Rebooting the box 
does fix it "for a while". Having dug around Google - I've now set 
"hw.em.enable_msix=0" - the box ran the whole of the day with that set, 
before again - having em0 wedge up.

When it does this 'netstat -n -i' returns "silly" figures - i.e. if I catch 
it even moments after it's done it - it'll claim to have suffered billions 
of input/output and collision errors (huge amounts more than the amount of 
traffic that machine would have handled) - e.g.

"
Name    Mtu Network       Address              Ipkts Ierrs Idrop    Opkts 
Oerrs  Coll
em0    1500 <Link#5>      00:25:90:31:82:46 355482 10612864185945     0 
291109 3032246910270 1516123455135
"

Before it locks up, all ierr,oerr,coll are zero (i.e. only ipkts/opkts have 
incremented).

Running sysctl dev.em.0.debug=1 spits out on the console:

Interface is RUNNING and INACTIVE
em0: hw tdh = -1, hw tdt = -1
em0: hw rdh = -1, hw rdt = -1
em0: Tx Queue Status = 1
em0: Tx descriptors avail = 986
em0: Tx Descriptors avail failure = 0
em0: RX discarded packets = 0
em0: RX Next to Check = 844
em0: RX Next to Refresh = 843

(I don't like the look of the -1's but I don't know enough about what that 
sysctl dumps out to know if that's "bad").

The HP switch it's connected to doesn't seem to log any errors for the port.

Any suggestions on how I can debug this further, or any ideas to try and 
fix it?

You can find the dmesg output here:

  <http://www.tdx.com/dmesg.txt>;

(ifconfig -a is tacked on the end)

Regards,

-Karl



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