Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:44:40 -0800 (PST) From: "David A. Gatwood" <dgatwood@mklinux.org> To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: kern/45957: multiple bugs in sis driver Message-ID: <200212030726.gB37QFHM000714@netbackup.mklinux.org>
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>Number: 45957
>Category: kern
>Synopsis: multiple bugs in sis driver
>Confidential: no
>Severity: critical
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: freebsd-bugs
>State: open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: current-users
>Arrival-Date: Tue Dec 03 00:00:03 PST 2002
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: David A. Gatwood <dgatwood@mklinux.org>
>Release: FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 i386
>Organization:
The MkLinux Project
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD netbackup.mklinux.org 5.0-DP2 FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 #1: Sat Nov
16 13:38:33 GMT 2002 root@tomcat.bmah.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
i386
K7S5A mainboard/Athlon XP 1800+, FreeBSD-5.0-DP2
>Description:
First issue:
The sis(4) driver misbehaves badly when dealing with the chipset on the
K7S5A mainboard. This has been reported on both the FreeBSD-questions
and FreeBSD-security mailing lists over the last few months, but as
yet no one has suggested any fixes for the issue. The bug manifests
itself as packets dropped, and Ierrs being incremented for the interface.
The following things have been checked and exonerated as possible causes:
1. Network cable/connection (works fine for other machines).
2. IRQ conflict. Was originally sharing an interrupt line with a Promise
card. Reconfigured cards to eliminate this problem (apart from
sharing with a disabled serial port).
3. I/O space conflict.
4. PCI memory space conflict.
5. Router issues or other network problems.
In case it's relevant, I'm running a 10-base-T-only network. No idea
about the other folks who had similar problems.
Second issue:
I tried to determine whether the problem was generic to this driver
in this configuration or whether it was a bug in the actual chipset
that needed to be worked around, but I couldn't make that work at all.
To do this, I tried using a Netgear FA-311 card that I had lying around.
As several other folks have noted, the ATA bus on the motherboard
goes South with that card present.
Best guess on that issue is that this second issue is probably an I/O
space conflict. Others have suggested similar theories.
I'm not sure how practical this is in the FreeBSD driver architecture,
but it would be nice to have a way to disable port based access to the
FA-311 in the PCI bridge as soon as such a device is detected, say as
part of a PCI quirk table, and then just use memory space access to drive
the card. There shouldn't be any reason to keep it enabled, assuming
the sis driver is cross-platform.
Partial Workaround:
For now, I was able to hack around the problem by stealing an FA-310
(tulip) card out of a Linux box and use that. Ping tests to the two
interfaces reveal a clean connection for the tulip interface, and about 5%
packet loss for the sis interface. Swapped connections on the two
interfaces just to be absolutely certain that it's a problem with the
interface and/or the driver. Still packet loss on the sis, clean on the
tulip.
>How-To-Repeat:
Use the listed mainboard. It will occur consistently,
sporadically.
>Fix:
no fix known, workaround is to use a non-sis-based PCI NIC
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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