Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:49:04 -0500 From: Mark Kane <mark@mkproductions.org> To: "Daniel A." <alive@dienub.org> Cc: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Good network card? Message-ID: <20060822144904.6165c8c6@localhost> In-Reply-To: <44EB4839.8050304@dienub.org> References: <44EB4839.8050304@dienub.org>
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On Tue, Aug 22, 2006, at 20:08:57 +0200, Daniel A. wrote: > Hi, > I am currently having a big deal of issues with the ethernet cards on > my server, as well as a possible motherboard problem. > This causes my server to reboot occasionally, but never in a > predictable pattern. A while back, the reboots only occured once > every two weeks - But now they're almost every other hour. I cant > take it anymore. > > So, do you know if the "watchdog timeout"s caused by bad network > cards can cause a complete system crash/lockup/reboot? If yes, > shouldn't a kernel core be dumped? And if no kernel is dumped, does > it mean that the issue is potentially with my IDE controller or > harddrive? I noticed that, at a point where I had no internet > connection (And hence, my server was not used - but still turned on), > the server stayed up for 20 days straight without any issues at all - > So my #1 suspicion right now is my network cards. Hi. I'm not completely sure on this part. The only watchdog timeouts I've had was indeed a bad used network card, and it happened right away when I started to configure the box. I replaced it with a brand new one and it started working perfectly. I don't recall any crashes or reboots, but it did constantly flood the screen with watchdog timeouts and I couldn't do anything with the machine. Are there any other messages in /var/log/messages or dmesg that could be related, or on the console itself when the machine reboots? Maybe it is another problem causing the crashes that also causes problems with the networking. It does seem weird that the onboard and the PCI would be having the same problems though. Maybe this will help in debugging it if it is a kernel panic: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/kerneldebug.html > Considering that I am quite poor - What PCI ethernet cards should I > buy for my server? And could you suggest a cheap motherboard which > isn't bad too? I like NICs from 3com, and Linksys' LNE100TX has been pretty stable over the years. Both are around $20 here in the US, but I'd go with the 3com for new purchases. As far as the motherboard, I'm not sure what type of CPU you have, but I've been buying MSI boards lately and they have been working out well. They're pretty well priced also. By the way, what version of FreeBSD? Perhaps if it's an older version and these problems have been happening since the beginning, it may be an incompatibility and already fixed in a newer version. However that wouldn't explain why it has gotten more frequent over time. -Mark -- Internet Radio: Party107 (Trance/Electronic) - http://www.party107.com Rock 101.9 The Edge (Rock) - http://www.rock1019.net IRC: MIXXnet IRC Network - irc.mixxnet.net (Nick: MIXX941) GnuPG Public Key: http://www.mkproductions.org/mk_pubkey.asc
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