From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 23 00:26:14 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B624E16A4DA for ; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:26:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mhunter@malcolm.berkeley.edu) Received: from malcolm.berkeley.edu (malcolm.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.206.239]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4D73143D4C for ; Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:26:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mhunter@malcolm.berkeley.edu) Received: from malcolm.berkeley.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by malcolm.berkeley.edu (8.13.6/8.13.3) with ESMTP id k7N0QDMl026211 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:26:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mhunter@malcolm.berkeley.edu) Received: (from mhunter@localhost) by malcolm.berkeley.edu (8.13.6/8.13.3/Submit) id k7N0QD8J026210; Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:26:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mhunter) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:26:12 -0700 From: Mike Hunter To: Paul Koch Message-ID: <20060823002612.GB25269@malcolm.berkeley.edu> References: <20060818120041.024AA16A66B@hub.freebsd.org> <44E5F4F2.7030807@umn.edu> <200608191150.22128.paul.koch@statseeker.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200608191150.22128.paul.koch@statseeker.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-1.6 (malcolm.berkeley.edu [127.0.0.1]); Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:26:14 -0700 (PDT) Cc: Alan Amesbury , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD boots too fast on Dell PE850 X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:26:14 -0000 On Aug 19 at 11:50, "Paul Koch" wrote: > The second problem we found was, various NICs would report that they > were "active" after doing auto negotiation, but no rx packets were > being passed into to the OS. Not sure if it was a hardware or driver > issue, but we discovered that by forcing a packet out the NIC via the > bpf interface, it would immediately start doing stuff. It was if the > auto negotiation had not really completed fully until a packet was > transmitted. This only occurred on certain types of NICs, the newer > ones. This was a problem for us because we build something called > a "remote network appliance" (RNA) which is basically FreeBSD on a > floppy and runs a statistical lan analyser. The RNA might have many > NICs in it, one with an IP, the others just connected to network > segments in promiscuous mode. Our apps couldn't monitor any traffic > because no packets had be sent out the interfaces. So, early in the > boot process we force out a couple of "Loopback" packets and everything > works just fine. > > Not sure if the second issue would be a problem for normal installations > though. I have a feeling this is related to windows; I recently watched a windows server boot with ethereal and it did an "arp x.x.x.x is-at a:b:c:d:e:f" (or 2 or 3) first thing (it had a static IP)...so of course a nic vendor would never realize there's a problem since they only test with windows....*sigh*. Not sure how DHCP would play into that.