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Date:      Tue, 6 Apr 1999 02:19:27 -0400 (EDT)
From:      wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul)
To:        shocking@prth.pgs.com (Stephen Hocking-Senior Programmer PGS Tensor Perth)
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Patched RealTek driver -- please test
Message-ID:  <199904060619.CAA01436@sirius.ctr.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199904060541.NAA29001@ariadne.tensor.pgs.com> from "Stephen Hocking-Senior Programmer PGS Tensor Perth" at Apr 6, 99 01:41:56 pm

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Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Stephen
Hocking-Senior Programmer PGS Tensor Perth had to walk into mine and say:
 
> Well, I nipped home over my lunch break & gave it a try - some progress, of a 
> sort. My NFS problems have gone away (at least under light activity), but it 
> now seems rather sensitive to sending lots of stuff. The symptoms observed are 
> a hard hang of the whole machine, no response to pings or keyboard action. I 
> cant even break into DDB. How I reproduced this is as follows - get the 
> netpipe program off ports, then set up a receiver on the non-realtek machine 
> as follows -

[chop]

Sorry, I did traffic generation tests. I banged on it as hard as I could.
I didn't have any problems with lockups.

> NPtcp -s -r
> 
> Then on the RealTek machine do this -
> 
> NPtcp -s -t -h non-realtek-hostname -P
> 
> After  about 5 or so lines of throughput stats, it dies in the bum.

Don't tell me 'after about 5 lines.' Tell me in minutes. Seconds.
Hours. Weeks. How _LONG_ does it run before it locks up!! And what
do the stats sat anyway!

Alright, now see here: I put up yet another test version. This one
has code in every conceivable place where the driver might get caught
in an infinite loop (which is the only thing that might cause the
system to appear to hang, short of executing a halt instruction).
Same place (www.freebsd.org:/~wpaul/RealTek/test/3.0). Try _THIS_
version. Tell me if it locks up. Watch the console. Tell me if you
see any messages (i.e. "rl0: looping in <foo>"). If you do, report
them to me VERBATIM. (No paraphrasing, no inventing new messages
which you think represent what you saw. VERBATIM. Or else.)

If it still locks up and you don't see any errors, then the problem
you're experiencing is either not related to the driver, or is related
in some way that only manifiests itself on your hardware and which I
will never be able to reproduce (since your hardware is over there,
and I'm way over here). Maybe it's some peculiar kind of hardware
fault. Maybe your PCI chipset blows. Maybe the RealTek blows when used
in combination with your PCI chipset. Regardless, it's a condition
which I can't reproduce on my own hardware, and if I can't reproduce
the problem, I can't fix it.

-Bill

-- 
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
=============================================================================
"Mulder, toads just fell from the sky!" "I guess their parachutes didn't open."
=============================================================================


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