Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6)

Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6)

[Michael Guntsche]

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Hi,

Im using ACPI on my Acer Travelmate 800 for a very long time.
I never had any big problems with it, until now.

Today I activated my builtin ethernet card (BCM4401) because I wanted to
copy a large amount of data. (normally I only use WLAN).

First I copied some files from my notebook to another computer.
Everything worked fine.

But then I tried to copy an CD-Image file from our fileserver to my
notebook. As soon as the transfer started, the following error messages
appeared
in my syslog and the transfer stalled. 

	b44: eth0: Link is down.
	b44: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
	b44: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
	<repeating>
	.........

Looking at the switch I saw that the card was indeed resetting itself.

-------------
	Server		-> 	Notebook 	OK
	Notebook	->	Server		NOT OK
-------------

Since I was running 2.6.0 I switched back to 2.4.23 to see if it had the
same problem.

To sum it up:

	2.6.0	   +	b44/bcm4400(Broadcom module) + pci=noacpi 	NOT OK
	2.4.2[23]  +	b44/bcm4400(Broadcom module) + pci=noacpi	NOT OK

BUT
	2.6.0      +	b44 + acpi=off OK

With acpi completely off the transfer worked in both directions without
any problems.


Does anybody here have a clue why?
I don't understand how ACPI can interfer with the card, since trying
pci=noacpi didn't work either.
		

Thanks in advance,
Michael










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Re: Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6)

[Michael Guntsche]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 01:08:22 +0100
Michael Guntsche <mike-Z92qn3yYq0hWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> But then I tried to copy an CD-Image file from our fileserver to my
> notebook. As soon as the transfer started, the following error messages
> appeared
> in my syslog and the transfer stalled. 
> 
> 	b44: eth0: Link is down.
> 	b44: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
> 	b44: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
> 	<repeating>
> 	.........

Today I tried the same transfer with a XIRCOM PCMCIA network card and ACPI enabled.
It worked without a problem.
I am not sure what this means for ACPI <-> B44 though. ;)


/Michael


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Re: Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6)

[Len Brown]

On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 10:57, Michael Guntsche wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 01:08:22 +0100
> Michael Guntsche <mike-Z92qn3yYq0hWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > But then I tried to copy an CD-Image file from our fileserver to my
> > notebook. As soon as the transfer started, the following error messages
> > appeared
> > in my syslog and the transfer stalled. 
> > 
> > 	b44: eth0: Link is down.
> > 	b44: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
> > 	b44: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
> > 	<repeating>
> > 	.........
> 
> Today I tried the same transfer with a XIRCOM PCMCIA network card and ACPI enabled.
> It worked without a problem.
> I am not sure what this means for ACPI <-> B44 though. ;)

Please note which IRQ each kind of ethernet NIC gets,
and if it shares an IRQ with any other device.
If the working and non-working NICs come up on different IRQs
then that may be a clue.

But the fact that B44 works with acpi=off and fails with pci=noacpi
suggests that IRQ assignment isn't the problem.

Looking at the actual ACPI interrupt:

  0:     738650          XT-PIC  timer
  9:       3546          XT-PIC  acpi

Not an interrupt storm, but you're getting a measurable number of acpi
events.


echo 0x4 > /proc/acpi/debug_layer
echo 0x08000000 > /proc/acpi/debug_level

may tell us what they are -- though it is unclear why they might
interfere with the B44 device and not others.

>Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
> Found and enabled local APIC!

This can be risky -- please verify that "nolapic" has no effect.

thanks,
-Len




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Re: Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6)

[Michael Guntsche]

On 30 Dec 2003 12:48:02 -0500
Len Brown <len.brown-ral2JQCrhuEAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> > Today I tried the same transfer with a XIRCOM PCMCIA network card
> > and ACPI enabled. It worked without a problem.
> > I am not sure what this means for ACPI <-> B44 though. ;)
> 
> Please note which IRQ each kind of ethernet NIC gets,
> and if it shares an IRQ with any other device.
> If the working and non-working NICs come up on different IRQs
> then that may be a clue.

The broadcom card gets IRQ 5 and the Xircom card gets IRQ3.
Both IRQ are non-shared. Well IRQ 5 was shared with USB, but for testing
purposes I removed the USB modules.


> 
> But the fact that B44 works with acpi=off and fails with pci=noacpi
> suggests that IRQ assignment isn't the problem.
> 
> Looking at the actual ACPI interrupt:
> 
>   0:     738650          XT-PIC  timer
>   9:       3546          XT-PIC  acpi
> 
> Not an interrupt storm, but you're getting a measurable number of acpi
> events.
> 
> 
> echo 0x4 > /proc/acpi/debug_layer
> echo 0x08000000 > /proc/acpi/debug_level
> 
> may tell us what they are -- though it is unclear why they might
> interfere with the B44 device and not others.

I know where the IRQ's come from. I have an applet running that shows me
the battery state and temperature via ACPI. Every time it polls the stats
the interrupts increase.
For testing purposes I disabled it, verified that the interrupts didn't increase
and tried copying a file, same result.

> 
> >Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
> > Found and enabled local APIC!
> 
> This can be risky -- please verify that "nolapic" has no effect.
I tried "nolapic" and even compiled a kernel completely without IOAPIC support.
No change.

Is ACPI doing something nasty with IRQ 5?


Cheers,
Michael


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Re: Network failures with ACPI enabled (kernel 2.4, 2.6) PROBLEM FOUND!!!!!!

[Michael Guntsche]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 19:23:01 +0100
Michael Guntsche <mike-Z92qn3yYq0hWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On 30 Dec 2003 12:48:02 -0500
> Len Brown <len.brown-ral2JQCrhuEAvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > > Today I tried the same transfer with a XIRCOM PCMCIA network card
> > > and ACPI enabled. It worked without a problem.
> > > I am not sure what this means for ACPI <-> B44 though. ;)
> > 
> > Please note which IRQ each kind of ethernet NIC gets,
> > and if it shares an IRQ with any other device.
> > If the working and non-working NICs come up on different IRQs
> > then that may be a clue.
> 
> The broadcom card gets IRQ 5 and the Xircom card gets IRQ3.
> Both IRQ are non-shared. Well IRQ 5 was shared with USB, but for
> testing purposes I removed the USB modules.

Hia Len,

You won't believe me but I found out what was causing the problem.
Since I never use the parallel port on this notebook I turned it OFF in
the BIOS.
Setting it to AUTOMATIC mode solved my issues.
The Linux-ACPI still has a problem somewhere since I don't see the
network timeouts in WinXP, if I turn off the parport.
For me it looks like that the parport and the internal card share
something, either ACPI or hardware wise and by turning off the parport
the network card somehow changes too.

What do you think about that?

Michael


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