Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 13:09:04 +1000 From: jonathan michaels <jon@caamora.com.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: tcp/ip failing on freebsd network Message-ID: <19990417130904.A3459@caamora.com.au>
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hello all as i am no subscribed to teh mailing list i would arpeciate being cc'd a responce, please. my small network consists off 4 intel computers, 2xi486dx33, a p5-133 and a p6-180. these have all been running reliably for 8+ years (teh i486) teh p5 for 4 years with some minor aberations and teh p6 fro some 6+ months flawlessly. the two i486 run smc etherelite nics now on utp via a netgear en308 10baset hub (6 months old). teh p5 has an smc 10 mb dec tulip nic (de0) and teh p6 has a newish upmarket smc 10/100 mbit propriety chip set nic (tx0). as regrards teh reffbsd installs, teh a i486dx33 run v2.2.5, the other runs v2.2.7, the p5 runs v2.2.5 and teh p6 runs with v2.2.7. all worked very well till about two weeks ago with the p6 started to drop teh netork conection while reading mail with mutt over a ssh -C -v hostname -l username connection tot eh mail host. i chacked teh logs, at both ends. after i killed off teh session, by loging in as root n another terminal session and issuing a kill on teh relevant processes. this wnet on for a week on and off. finally i started to reboot using teh -verbose flag, all i could find that was different was that teh nic was now trying to use irq 9 as its irq. from memory i originally told teh computers bios to use irq 10, i think. well anyway, yesterday after lots of fidling and calble making and swaping the tx0 remains steadfastly at irq9. and refusing to see the rest of teh network. then the p5 has started tp exhibit teh same behaviour. this is awkward as it neans that i can nolonger ues teh p5/p6 to back up teh services that were being hosted on teh i486 pair. this network is a 24x7 installation that will eventually host services for disabled peole built and run by disabled people. i've been scouting around and i've been told that the pci stuff is definately plug and pray (tm) and that thier is little t that can be done to hardwire teh interfaces .. i also noticed in teh o'reilly book 'linux in a nutshell' reading about ifconfig, that thier is an option that will allow one to set teh nic's irq from teh commandline. this seems to be ideal fro what i need, is this available in teh freebsd implementation of ifconfig, i checked teh manpage, it makes no mention, teh handbook seems to make no mention of this sort of a problem. if i could afford to swapout teh hardware i woud have done so, this problem is pervasive nd apreas to be spreading. as regards hardware failure, i've checked teh ports on teh hub and they all work for teh i486's on utp into smc etherleite nic's it is just this pair of newish plug and pray "mossters" that is so frustratinly hard to pull back into line. does anyone have any suggestions or words of wisdom, they woud be apreciated. as regards hardware failure, all teh magic smoke appears to be still inside teh little black boxes on teh circuit boards and freebsd dosnet complain about any 'broken' hardware on startup and all teh logs show noting spectacular, that is they show all that they have displayed for teh last X years. what concerns me is teh fact that the nics changed thier irq's and chose one that s being used by teh pci-isa bridge chip fro redirecting teh harddisks, in both cases the intelchip is is using irq 9 to redirect the irq services for teh hard disk known as D: IRQ9, i don't understand the what and why but surmise that even in a pci bus that knows about irq sharing a nic and a harddisk interface are fairly well used devices so sharing a irq would be painfull to say teh least, and tehn the fact that its a 'nonexistant] so to speak interrupt, irq 9 that s being used. well any way that is all that i can tell you as a no longer very technical person. please excuse teh spelling, its teh best that i can do witht he neurological damage that i have sustained. regards jonathan ps, to reiterate, i mano longer subscribed to freebsd-questions, so a cc: to your responce would nbe muchly apreciated. -- =============================================================================== Jonathan Michaels PO Box 144, Rosebery, NSW 1445 Australia ===========================================================<jon@caamora.com.au> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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