Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:53:09 +0100 (BST) From: Chris Hedley <freebsd-current@chrishedley.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Linux NFS ate my bge Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.0907222232310.3132@teapot.cbhnet>
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My bge network interface dies when faced with a barrage of Linux NFS requests. I've (re)discovered this now that I've recently got my assorted config problems largely ironed out and have my FreeBSD box up to date again, I'm reminded of an unresolved problem from way back, which is that my bge card collapses after being subjected to a large amount of NFS traffic coming from my Linux box, e.g. recompiling KDE on a discless workstation, which has been responsible for three embuggerances so far today. Now I'm not sure if it's specifically Linux NFS it doesn't like, or just NFS, or even just a lot of traffic (though Samba doesn't do this - I'd like to say it's probably because Windows' CIFS or whatever it's called this week is too inefficient to generate that amount of traffic, but actually its performance is much better than FreeBSD - Linux NFS), but it frequently puts my FreeBSD system into a state where my bge is unusable unless I reboot; and by "reboot" I mean "reset" as it seems to render the rest of the system prone to locking up solid, presumably putting anything wanting network access into a no-wake state, or whatever the 21st century name is for an unkillable process. Scanning back through the archives I see I'm not alone with both this problem and assorted other bge-related annoyances, which I gather are likely due to insufficient documentation being provided to the kernel devs to get a robust driver together. I guess my question is "have any breakthroughs been made?" and given that I'm using -current, I guess the answer is "no". In which case I guess my next question is "what cheap but good PCI/PCI-X (but not PCIe) based card would you recommend?" since I'd rather just get this one sorted out once and for all. My only real requirement is that it does 1 Gbit. And works. I did wonder for a while if it might be something to do with having four aliases on the same subnet on my bge (32 bit netmask, of course) but it seems to make no difference whether they're configured or not (it was interesting seeing the ifconfig after one bge failure place the primary interface /after/ all its aliases; don't know if that's symptomatic of what's going on, but do bear in mind that as I mentioned it seems to make no difference to its stability whether those aliases are present or not). Another (totally unrelated) thing that should probably go in its own thread, I've found an oddity with the ohci and/or ukbd drivers which is that if I compile them into my kernel it won't boot, but if I leave them as separate modules and get loader to deal with them it boots fine. That's "won't boot" as in "gets to the orm0 bit of its boot messages and then hangs"; normally sc0 comes next, though I don't know if the USB bits change that. I'm not that bothered as I prefer modular kernels anyway, but I thought I'd bring it up in case anyone's interested. Cheers, Chris.
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