Re: [PATCH] sis900 fix (Was: [CHECKER] Resource leaks in driver shutdown functions)

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

On Friday 07 May 2004 10:06, Daniele Venzano wrote:
> On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 12:23:40PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> > Does this fix the problem where you unplug the cat 5 cable from an SiS900
> > and then plug it back in (toggling the MII tranciever link detect status
> > and all that), and the device goes positively mental until you reboot the
> > system? (Packets randomly dropped or delayed for up to 15 seconds, and
> > arriving out of sequence with horrible impacts on performance?)
> >
> > I tried pursuing this when I first noticed it circa 2.4.4, but as you
> > say, the driver is unmaintained and I haven't got specs (or any clue
> > about) the chipset...
>
> I was not aware of this problem, the driver is slow to recognize the
> link status of the interface and often needs sending some packets before
> switching to link status on. But on my sis900 (on a laptop) I never
> observed a behavior similar to yours.
>
> The patch I submitted is a small fix in the power management code, so
> it's very unlikely that it fixes anything in the link detection,
> please also note that the patch is for kernels 2.6.x.

I've been using 2.6 exclusively since 2.6.0-test3.  Booted back into 2.4 a 
couple times for debugging purposes in 2003, but I haven't even had a 2.4 
kernel on my laptop since new year's.  (Well, source tarball...)

> The driver in 2.6 has some small differencies that probably are fixes
> never backported, is the driver in 2.4 also broken for other people ?
> Are you using the 2.6 or 2.4 driver ?

The problems were all with servers using the 2.4 driver.  I've got a machine 
in pieces upstairs with an SIS900 controller built into the motherboard, I 
can assemble that and give it a whack at some unspecified point in the 
future.  Also the machine my website and email are on has an SIS900 
on-motherboard controller connecting it to its DSL line, but that's in 
Pennsylvania and a bit difficult to debug at present.

I'll see if the problem persists under 2.6.6.

> Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for actually taking a toothbrush to the sis900 driver.

Rob