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Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:51:19 +0000
From: Tom Judge <tom@tomjudge.com>
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To: Weldon S Godfrey 3 <weldon@excelsusphoto.com>
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Cc: Pieter de Goeje <pieter@degoeje.nl>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org,
	Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 8.0 - network stack crashes?
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Weldon S Godfrey 3 wrote:
> 
> 
> If memory serves me right, sometime around 9:37am, Pieter de Goeje told me:
> 
>> Are you perhaps using em(4)? There was an mbuf leak in the driver, 
>> which was fixed recently.
>> You can check mbuf usage with netstat -m.
>>
> 
> we are using onboard NICs on the Dell using the bce driver.  We did try 
> several times to see if using an intel PCIexpress card using the em 
> driver, and we had the same symptoms.
> 
> Could the bce driver have the same leak?

The bce driver does not have a memory leak, it does however have a bug 
which causes memory fragmentation leading to denied mbuf allocation.


There is a work around for this in current, you can get the patch like this:

http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base/head/

You need to put

options		BCE_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT

In your kernel to enable the work arround.

Tom