DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Hello all,

  I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
are granted via DHCP, although every host has
a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
our network.

  The freshly installed RedHat 6.2 worked nice
and flawlessly, and the IP was handed out correctly
to the new machine. However after upgrading
to the 2.2.16 RedHat Kernel RPMS, the DHCP negotiation
no longer worked! Okay, I said, maybe it is a RedHat
thing (they included modules both for the 90x and for the 59x
cards, and I tried both), so I downloaded 2.2.18 proper.
I compiled in the support for the card, but also: same
result. The old 2.2.14 RedHat kernel worked, but the
newer kernels did not.

  Unfortunately the machine had to go on the net, so I had
to switch the NIC for a DEC Tulip one, which worked flawlessly
under 2.2.18 again. Therfore I unfortunately can't volunteer
for testing :(, all I can say is that something happened
between 2.2.14 and 2.2.16/2.2.18 which made DHCP inoperable
for the 3c905C.

Please CC any replies to my email adress, as I am not subscribed
to linux-kernel.

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Andrew Morton]

Christian Loth wrote:
> 
> Hello all,

Hi, Christian.

>   I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
> NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
> are granted via DHCP, although every host has
> a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
> is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
> our network.

hmm..  I've heard of this once before.  Running
pump from the RH initscripts?

>   The freshly installed RedHat 6.2 worked nice
> and flawlessly, and the IP was handed out correctly
> to the new machine. However after upgrading
> to the 2.2.16 RedHat Kernel RPMS, the DHCP negotiation
> no longer worked! Okay, I said, maybe it is a RedHat
> thing (they included modules both for the 90x and for the 59x
> cards, and I tried both),

Did _both_ 3c90x and 3c59x fail, or only 3c59x?

> so I downloaded 2.2.18 proper.
> I compiled in the support for the card, but also: same
> result. The old 2.2.14 RedHat kernel worked, but the
> newer kernels did not.
> 
>   Unfortunately the machine had to go on the net, so I had
> to switch the NIC for a DEC Tulip one, which worked flawlessly
> under 2.2.18 again. Therfore I unfortunately can't volunteer
> for testing :(, all I can say is that something happened
> between 2.2.14 and 2.2.16/2.2.18 which made DHCP inoperable
> for the 3c905C.

Thanks.  I'll try to reproduce this (fat chance :().
Is there any chance you can set this arrangement up
again in the future?
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Hello again,

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 11:41:50PM +1100, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> hmm..  I've heard of this once before.  Running
> pump from the RH initscripts?
> 

Yes, but I also tested the normal dhcp client from the dhcpcd (sp?)
RPM. This one didn't work either.

> 
> Did _both_ 3c90x and 3c59x fail, or only 3c59x?
> 

Both did not work. And 3c59x from 2.2.18 didn't work
as well, and as far as I could judge 3c90x is not included
in the kernel proper, right?

> 
> Thanks.  I'll try to reproduce this (fat chance :().
> Is there any chance you can set this arrangement up
> again in the future?

I fear not :( It's a private project and my
budget is very very limited. The 3com card is exchanged for the
DEC Tulip card (actually a Netgear NIC), and I simply can't afford 
to buy another one, as they're pretty expensive.

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Andrew Morton]

Christian Loth wrote:
> 
> >
> > Did _both_ 3c90x and 3c59x fail, or only 3c59x?
> >
> 
> Both did not work. And 3c59x from 2.2.18 didn't work
> as well, and as far as I could judge 3c90x is not included
> in the kernel proper, right?

Now that is wierd.  They're radically different drivers,
and the 3com one doesn't seem to undergo many changes at
all.

I wonder if the PCI scan order may have changed.  What
other PCI devices did you have in that machine? Any other
NICs?

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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Ingo T. Storm]

>  I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
>NIC on RedHat 6.2.

>  The freshly installed RedHat 6.2 worked nice
>and flawlessly,

>However after upgrading
>to the 2.2.16 RedHat Kernel RPMS, the DHCP negotiation
>no longer worked!

>I downloaded 2.2.18 proper. I compiled in the support
>for the card, but also: same result.

Have you checked conf.modules that now is modules.conf?

In my case rh had just renamed/aliased the device and as soon as I had
adapted modules.conf accordingly, the card worked.

Of course, I might have completely misunderstood the problem, but it
sounds a lot like what I saw...

Cheers,

Ingo



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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Greetings,

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 11:59:11PM +1100, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Now that is wierd.  They're radically different drivers,
> and the 3com one doesn't seem to undergo many changes at
> all.
> 
> I wonder if the PCI scan order may have changed.  What
> other PCI devices did you have in that machine? Any other
> NICs?

No, no other NICs. There's a Matrox G200 in the AGP slot,
and a 3Ware 6200 ATA-66 RAID Controller in another PCI slot.
There's an onboard SCSI controller from Adaptec (AIC7xxx) 
but it's unused and this is a SMP system. The Motherboard is 
a Gigabyte G6BXDU. That's about it.

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Greetings,

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 02:11:00PM +0100, Ingo T. Storm wrote:
> 
> Have you checked conf.modules that now is modules.conf?
> 

Yes I have. By editing it, I was able to test both the 3c59x 
and the 3c90x drivers. Also the modules were correctly loaded
in both testruns, which I confirmed with a lsmod.

On another note: I *was* able to set up the card manually
by doing an ifconfig (and it worked that way), but as the
firewall adapts dynamically to the DHCP leases, this
is not a solution. So only DHCP negotiation was not working,
which worked OK with the vanilla RH 6.2 2.2.14 kernel.

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Arjan van de Ven]

In article <20010104123139.A15097@gidayu.max.uni-duisburg.de> you wrote:
> Hello all,

>   I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
> NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
> are granted via DHCP, although every host has
> a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
> is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
> our network.

Is this machine by chance an SMP machine ? 

Greetings,
   Arjan van de Ven
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Hello,

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 05:01:13PM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> 
> Is this machine by chance an SMP machine ? 
> 

Indeed, it is.

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[idalton]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 12:31:39PM +0100, Christian Loth wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
>   I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
> NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
> are granted via DHCP, although every host has
> a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
> is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
> our network.
> 
>   The freshly installed RedHat 6.2 worked nice
> and flawlessly, and the IP was handed out correctly
> to the new machine. However after upgrading
> to the 2.2.16 RedHat Kernel RPMS, the DHCP negotiation
> no longer worked! Okay, I said, maybe it is a RedHat
> thing (they included modules both for the 90x and for the 59x
> cards, and I tried both), so I downloaded 2.2.18 proper.
> I compiled in the support for the card, but also: same
> result. The old 2.2.14 RedHat kernel worked, but the
> newer kernels did not.
> 
>   Unfortunately the machine had to go on the net, so I had
> to switch the NIC for a DEC Tulip one, which worked flawlessly
> under 2.2.18 again. Therfore I unfortunately can't volunteer
> for testing :(, all I can say is that something happened
> between 2.2.14 and 2.2.16/2.2.18 which made DHCP inoperable
> for the 3c905C.


I think I have a similar problem with a 3c905B. I'm using Debian/GNU
Linux (Potato) with the 2.2.18-pre kernel to do the install. DHCP
configuration from the installer does not work, but DHCP configuration
from the installed system (configuring the network manually, then
changing to DHCP afterward) works.

What I noticed, was during the install my DHCP server wasn't seeing the
broatcasts from the client.

Also, I notice that with the kernel driver, the NIC switches to 10baseT
half-duplex when the interface is brought up, yet the MII autonegotiates
with the other end to 100baseTX half-duplex. I haven't tried 3com's
driver yet. Oh.. and 3com's windows driver was doing the same thing (as
of about ten months ago) when I had the NIC in a windows machine last.
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Andrew Morton]

Christian Loth wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
>   I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
> NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
> are granted via DHCP, although every host has
> a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
> is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
> our network.

Christian,

I was able to reproduce this.  All sorts of wierd stuff.

All the problems magically disappeared after upgrading
to pump-0.8.6.

You wouldn't *believe* how hard it is to find a pump
tarball, so I've put one at

	http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/pump-0.8.6.tar.gz

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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Tim Wright]

Sounds somewhat familiar. The pump that came with RedHat 6.2 never worked
correctly at work, but dhcpcd worked just fine (we don't have static IP
addresses, but there are fewer machines than there are addresses in the pool,
so effectively, we do :-). The odd thing is that I (mis?)understood in this
case that dhcpcd was not working either (unless I'm confusing this with a
different thread). Suffice to say that newer versions of pump seem to work
much better, at least for me.

Tim

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 12:42:55AM +1100, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Christian Loth wrote:
> > 
> > Hello all,
> > 
> >   I recently installed a system with the 3c905C
> > NIC on RedHat 6.2. In our network, IP adresses
> > are granted via DHCP, although every host has
> > a fixed IP instead of a dynamic IP pool. The IP
> > is statically coupled with the MAC adresses of
> > our network.
> 
> Christian,
> 
> I was able to reproduce this.  All sorts of wierd stuff.
> 
> All the problems magically disappeared after upgrading
> to pump-0.8.6.
> 
> You wouldn't *believe* how hard it is to find a pump
> tarball, so I've put one at
> 
> 	http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/pump-0.8.6.tar.gz
> 
> -
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> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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-- 
Tim Wright - timw@splhi.com or timw@aracnet.com or twright@us.ibm.com
IBM Linux Technology Center, Beaverton, Oregon
"Nobody ever said I was charming, they said "Rimmer, you're a git!"" RD VI
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Andrew Morton]

Tim Wright wrote:
> 
> Sounds somewhat familiar. The pump that came with RedHat 6.2 never worked
> correctly at work, but dhcpcd worked just fine (we don't have static IP
> addresses, but there are fewer machines than there are addresses in the pool,
> so effectively, we do :-). The odd thing is that I (mis?)understood in this
> case that dhcpcd was not working either (unless I'm confusing this with a
> different thread). Suffice to say that newer versions of pump seem to work
> much better, at least for me.

No, you're not confused.  Someone did mention that dhcpcd was
playing up.

Obviously, something changed between 2.2.14 and more current
kernels which broke pump.  I don't believe it's a driver change
because it also affects the 3c90x driver.  I don't have a theory
as to why this affects the 3com NICs though.  But I'm assuming
that whatever broke pump also broke dhcpcd.

I note that with 3c59x in 2.4.0, pump-0.7.3 basically freezes up.
It spits out a single bootp packet then goes to lunch.  I got
bored waiting after ten minutes. So an upgrade is definitely needed.

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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[David Ford]

On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Obviously, something changed between 2.2.14 and more current
> kernels which broke pump.  I don't believe it's a driver change
> because it also affects the 3c90x driver.  I don't have a theory
> as to why this affects the 3com NICs though.  But I'm assuming
> that whatever broke pump also broke dhcpcd.
> 
> I note that with 3c59x in 2.4.0, pump-0.7.3 basically freezes up.
> It spits out a single bootp packet then goes to lunch.  I got
> bored waiting after ten minutes. So an upgrade is definitely needed.


IMO, pump is a POS.  I have had more complaints from others and troubles
with it personally than I care to acknowledge.  dhcpcd has worked great for
me for as long as I can recall.  dhclient also seems to work just fine.

I've used all of these from 2.2 on through 2.3 and currently using dhcpcd
and dhclient with 2.4 on tulips and 3coms.

-d

---NOTICE--- fwd: fwd: fwd: type emails will be deleted automatically.
      "There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are
      virtue and talents", Thomas Jefferson [1742-1826], 3rd US President

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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Alan Cox]

> Obviously, something changed between 2.2.14 and more current
> kernels which broke pump.  I don't believe it's a driver change
> because it also affects the 3c90x driver.  I don't have a theory
> as to why this affects the 3com NICs though.  But I'm assuming
> that whatever broke pump also broke dhcpcd.

The classic thing that pump catches drivers with is that interface goes
up/down/up in rapid succession. That broke the acenic driver at one point 
too

> I note that with 3c59x in 2.4.0, pump-0.7.3 basically freezes up.
> It spits out a single bootp packet then goes to lunch.  I got
> bored waiting after ten minutes. So an upgrade is definitely needed.

strace would be interesting

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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Andrew Morton]

Alan Cox wrote:
> 
> > Obviously, something changed between 2.2.14 and more current
> > kernels which broke pump.  I don't believe it's a driver change
> > because it also affects the 3c90x driver.  I don't have a theory
> > as to why this affects the 3com NICs though.  But I'm assuming
> > that whatever broke pump also broke dhcpcd.
> 
> The classic thing that pump catches drivers with is that interface goes
> up/down/up in rapid succession. That broke the acenic driver at one point
> too

That's interesting.

The open() and probe() logic in the 2.2.18 driver is basically unchanged
since 2.2.14.  And 3com's driver breaks with pump too.  AFAIK it's
completely unchanged.

This makes one wonder what a successful return from open() actually
_means_.  Autonegotiation takes up to three seconds, and we return from open()
with it still in progress.  So the interface is not yet usable. 

> > I note that with 3c59x in 2.4.0, pump-0.7.3 basically freezes up.
> > It spits out a single bootp packet then goes to lunch.  I got
> > bored waiting after ten minutes. So an upgrade is definitely needed.
> 
> strace would be interesting

It's very sick.  It forks a daemon.  The child process gets to
the stage where it has written out your new /etc/resolv.conf
and then it gets stuck making no system calls, chewing 100%
of CPU.

Yes, it ups and downs the interface a couple of times,
but everything seems happy.  In fact, killing off the
bisbehaving pump leaves the interface in a working state,
so perhaps I have not in fact reproduced the problem.  Hopefully
Christian can retest with a later pump and let me know.

1801  read(6, "#\n# /etc/nsswitch.conf\n#\n# An ex"..., 4096) = 1748
1801  read(6, "", 4096)                 = 0
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  munmap(0x40014000, 4096)          = 0
1801  open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 6
1801  fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=24405, ...}) = 0
1801  mmap(NULL, 24405, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 6, 0) = 0x40014000
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  open("/lib/libnss_files.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 6
1801  fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=292788, ...}) = 0
1801  read(6, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\260\36"..., 4096) = 4096
1801  mmap(NULL, 37640, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 6, 0) = 0x40110000
1801  mprotect(0x40118000, 4872, PROT_NONE) = 0
1801  mmap(0x40118000, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 6, 0x7000) = 0x40118000
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  munmap(0x40014000, 24405)         = 0
1801  socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0)   = 6
1801  connect(6, {sin_family=AF_UNIX, path="
               /var/run/.nscd_socket"}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  open("/etc/host.conf", O_RDONLY)  = 6
1801  fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=26, ...}) = 0
1801  mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40014000
1801  read(6, "order hosts,bind\nmulti on\n", 4096) = 26
1801  read(6, "", 4096)                 = 0
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  munmap(0x40014000, 4096)          = 0
1801  open("/etc/hosts", O_RDONLY)      = 6
1801  fcntl(6, F_GETFD)                 = 0
1801  fcntl(6, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)     = 0
1801  fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=314, ...}) = 0
1801  mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40014000
1801  read(6, "10.0.0.15\t\tmnm.uow.edu.au mnm\n10"..., 4096) = 314
1801  read(6, "", 4096)                 = 0
1801  close(6)                          = 0
1801  munmap(0x40014000, 4096)          = 0
1801  open("/etc/resolv.conf", O_RDONLY) = 6
1801  fstat(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=40, ...}) = 0
1801  read(6, "nameserver 61.8.0.5\nnameserver 6"..., 40) = 40
1801  close(6)                          = 0

*** End of output.
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Re: DHCP Problems with 3com 3c905C Tornado

[Christian Loth]

Hello again,

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 11:53:19PM +1100, Andrew Morton wrote:
> so perhaps I have not in fact reproduced the problem.  Hopefully
> Christian can retest with a later pump and let me know.

I fear I can't...I have no 3com905C in reach anymore as I had it
exchanged for a NetGear NIC. :(

- Chris

-- 
Christian Loth
Coder of 'Project Gidayu'
Computer Science Student, University of Dortmund
chris@gidayu.mud.de - http://gidayu.mud.de
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