Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 20:23:12 -0800 From: "Jack Vogel" <jfvogel@gmail.com> To: "Chris Howells" <howells@kde.org> Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Which motherboards work well with em(4)? Message-ID: <2a41acea0602202023q1688f135ld364e907c7a6b04@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <54431.192.168.0.1.1140488488.squirrel@webmail.devrandom.org.uk> References: <63472.192.168.0.1.1140456976.squirrel@webmail.devrandom.org.uk> <2a41acea0602201104v1c160788rf9db6bb5c96e7b34@mail.gmail.com> <51496.192.168.0.1.1140464280.squirrel@webmail.devrandom.org.uk> <2a41acea0602201749t48930ec1pbb90fb9656aa6297@mail.gmail.com> <54431.192.168.0.1.1140488488.squirrel@webmail.devrandom.org.uk>
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On 2/20/06, Chris Howells <howells@kde.org> wrote: > > > hmm, well these arent anything bleeding edge, so isnt any hardware > > issues that occur to me > > OK. I have reported this problem in the past and a few people like Gleb > Smirnoff and Christian Peron have helped in diagnosing and providing > patches. The problem always seems to be fixed then comes back some > unspecified time later. According to an email from Christian earlier toda= y > I am the only person still reporting the problem :( > > Since they are different ethernet controllers I am wondering if it could > be the motherboard failing to deal with the interrupts, or maybe even the > ethernet switch. Polling appears not to help though. The switch is a chea= p > SMC EZ 5 port, I've been comtemplating getting a cheap 5 port 3Com switch > from eBay to test. This is always a real possibility, however you have two systems with Intel gig nics and both are having this happen, so unless the motherboards are identical that seems unlikely. > > > It sounds like you have transmission hangs, about how frequently is > > this happening, and is there any other info about the situation that > > you can characterize? Like is the NIC running at gig speed, or is it > > lower, full duplex, etc etc... > > It's really hard to explain because it's a very intermittent. But both > NICs are connected to the same 5 port switch SMC EZ GigE switch. They are > both in auto negotiate mode (I tried forcing full duplex but it didn't > make any difference). > > My network layout is something like this: > > Windows XP PC, nVidia GigE > | > SMC EZ GigE Switch > | > SMC EZ GigE Switch -------` > | | | > 6.0-REL 6.1-pre Netgear 100MBit switch > machine machine > > > The cards just stop passing any data, seemingly at random. 'ifconfig em0 > down; ifconfig em0 up' fixes it, as does, IIRC, unplugging the ethernet > cable from the switch and plugging it in again. The cable is cat5e, quite > short (less than 1m), and I've tried various other cables without success= . > > Plugging the machine into the 100Mbit switch instead seems to prevent the > problem from occurring, so it seems to only be higher GigE speeds which > cause it. > > For instance, a couple of days ago I was restoring some data from a tape > accross the network, probably maxed out at 3Meg. After a few minutes the > receiving card just wedged. Not particularly intensive. > > On the other hand this afternoon I was testing and successfully copied 8G= B > or so of data from the XP machine to the machine running 6.1-pre. So I > started transferring the same lot of data to another folder on the samba > share and very soon after it wedged. Hmm, so its not hanging on transmit, its on receive according to what you are describing? Is that consistent?
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