Re: Problem with SMC Etherpower II + kernel newer 2.4.2

Florian Schmitt
2001-07-04T15:31:13Z

> Could you specify what you mean by "very high network traffic" in terms
> of interrupt rate and Mb/s ?
> Ftp on full CD content or gross ping -f doesn't kill it under 2.4 here.
> autonegociation sucks sometimes.

That's about what I did, except that I saved the data to a nfs mounted disk.

> Different switch/cable/*motherboard* ?

Probably not. I tried the drivers from http://www.scyld.com/network/ , and
the problem disappeared (thanks to Jeff Garzik for the suggestion).
I haven't tried 2.4.x again, but last time I did (2.4.6-pre6 or so), it
didn't even finish importing my nfs shares on startup.

In case you are interested, here is the output of the 2.2.18 drivers, when
the card hangs:

Jun 4 16:44:34 siechfried kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout using MII device,
Tx status 0005.
Jun 4 16:44:34 siechfried kernel: eth0: Restarting the EPIC chip, Rx
2026941/2026941 Tx 497569/497585.
Jun 4 16:44:34 siechfried kernel: eth0: epic_restart() done, cmd status
000a, ctl 0512 interrupt 240000.
Jun 4 16:44:39 siechfried kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout using MII device,
Tx status 0005.
Jun 4 16:44:39 siechfried kernel: eth0: Restarting the EPIC chip, Rx
2026941/2026941 Tx 497569/497585.
Jun 4 16:44:39 siechfried kernel: eth0: epic_restart() done, cmd status
000a, ctl 0512 interrupt 240000.
Jun 4 16:44:44 siechfried kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout using MII device,
Tx status 0005.
etc...

The driver from scyld.com did also issue such a warning, but only once and
everythings seems to be back to normal afterwards:

Jul 4 15:13:06 siechfried kernel: eth0: Tx hung, 25721 vs. 25713.
Jul 4 15:13:06 siechfried kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout using MII device,
Tx status 0003.
Jul 4 15:13:06 siechfried kernel: eth0: Restarting the EPIC chip, Rx
24507/24507 Tx 25713/25721.
Jul 4 15:13:06 siechfried kernel: eth0: epic_restart() done, cmd status
000a, ctl 0512 interrupt 240000.

I hope this helps,
Flo