From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 16:13:34 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 16:13:25 -0500 Received: from FACULTY-164.ubishops.ca ([207.162.104.164]:2820 "HELO thanatos.ubishops.ca") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Thu, 15 Feb 2001 16:13:10 -0500 Message-ID: <3A8C465D.5E2A118D@ubishops.ca> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 16:13:01 -0500 From: Thomas Hood Reply-To: jdthoodREMOVETHIS@yahoo.co.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.18 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] to deal with bad dev->refcnt in unregister_netdevice() In-Reply-To: <20010214092251.D1144@e-trend.de> <3A8AA725.7446DEA0@ubishops.ca> <20010214165758.L28359@e-trend.de> <20010214122244.H7859@conectiva.com.br> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Update on the "unregister_netdevice" bug ... Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo has been valiantly trying in his scarce free time to find the cause. I haven't been able to hunt effectively because I don't really understand the networking code; however I have been experimenting to see what are the exact conditions under which the failure occurs. I modified my kernel to print dev->refcnt in /proc/net/dev so that I could see what the refcnt of eth0 is at any given moment. One of the more interesting experiment logs is appended below. Experimentation seems to show 1) It happens when ipx is used, specifically when auto_interface=on and auto_primary=on 2) It happens only or especially when using DHCP 3) It happens only to PCMCIA ethernet cards Thomas Hood jdthood_AT_yahoo.co.uk Linux 2.4.1-ac10 /etc/pcmcia/network disabled with an 'exit 0' command refcnt message ------- ------ ------- (boot) 0 (I inserted Xircom card) 1 ifconfig eth0 up 2 ipx_configure --auto_interface=on --auto_primary=on 2 ifconfig eth0 down 0 "Freeing alive device c127ac8c, eth0" cardctl eject ? "unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free. Usage count = 0 Message from syslogd@thanatos at Wed Feb 14 12:51:26 2001 ... thanatos kernel: unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free. Usage count = 0"