Re: 3c59x.c - kernel message explosion (fwd)

[Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>]

Denny Gudea wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> id like to thank you for maintaining this driver..
> 
> i have a 3com 3c905 and im using 3c59x.c driver to run it in my linux
> machine. it is connected to a hub on a network with 7 nodes. it seems like
> one of the hosts on my network has a duplex problem (as is described in
> vortex.txt). the problem i'm having is that the driver does a lot of
> kernel messages for this error even though my debug is set to the default.
> 
> i've looked at the code and the problem seems to be due to a small typo:
> this code segment begins at line 1826:
> ------------------------------------------------
>        if (status & TxComplete) {                      /* Really "TxError" for us. */
>                 tx_status = inb(ioaddr + TxStatus);
>                 /* Presumably a tx-timeout. We must merely re-enable. */
>                 if (vortex_debug > 2
>                         || (tx_status != 0x88 && vortex_debug > 0)) {
>                         printk(KERN_ERR "%s: Transmit error, Tx status register %2.2x.\n",
>                                    dev->name, tx_status);
>                         if (tx_status == 0x82) {
>                                 printk(KERN_ERR "Probably a duplex mismatch.  See "
>                                                 "Documentation/networking/vortex.txt\n");
>                         }
>                         dump_tx_ring(dev);
> -------------------------------------------------
> i believe the problem resides when it tests for the debug level:
> 
>                   if (vortex_debug > 2
>                         || (tx_status != 0x88 && vortex_debug > 0)) {

The code is OK, I think.  It says, in a rather tortured manner,
"if debug > 0 then print stuff, unless it is a max-collisions-exceeded
event" and "if debug > 2 then print all events".

Probably many of these driver messages should be throttled
by net_ratelimit() but in practice, things work out OK.

Your machine is a special case, because your network is
bust.  The default value of `debug' is 1.  If you set
it to zero, those messages should go away?

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