Re: Asus K8N-VM Motherboard Ethernet Problem

[James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>]

James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
>> On Sat, 2006-05-27 23:07:39 -0700, Marc Perkel <marc@perkel.com> wrote:
>>> Marc Perkel wrote:
>> [forcedeth not working correctly]
>>> Also - why is it that I can load a 3 year old version of Windows XP on 
>>> this motherboad and it just work but I load a modern Linux Kernel and it 
>>> can't find the Ethernet card?
>> That is either because Windows XP is totally superior to Linux, or
>> because the vendor (NVidia in this case) wrote a Windows driver, but
>> they didn't write something for Linux _and_ didn't publish any specs
>> for this ethernet controller.  So it took some time to reverse
>> engineer the Windows driver...
>>
>> MfG, JBG
>>
> 
> I can concur that the forcedeth is unreliable on nvidia based motherboards.
> I have a ethernet device that works with forcedeth.
> 0000:00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
> 0000:00:0a.0 0680: 10de:0057 (rev a3)
>         Subsystem: 147b:1c12
>         Flags: 66MHz, fast devsel, IRQ 11
>         Memory at fe02f000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
>         I/O ports at fc00 [size=8]
>         Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
> 
> It works in that it can actually send and receive packets.
> The problems are:
> 1) one cannot rmmod the forcedeth module. Even after ifdown etc.
> 2) the machine hangs randomly.
> Before someone asks, the MB has no serial port, so no stack trace available.
> 3) The netconsole fails to function with it.
> 
> I have installed a standard PCI based intel ethernet card, and only use
> that. Without the forcedeth loaded, no hangs since.
> 
> So, although I can confirm that there are certainly problems with the
> forcedeth driver, without a serial port, I am at a loss at how I might
> help diagnose the problem and fix it.
> 
> The only help this email is, is to confirm that if someone is raising
> problems with the forcedeth driver, it is most likely to be a truthful
> report and if they also have a serial port, they might even be able to
> give some good diagnosis output.
> 
> James
> 

For those interested, I am using the forcedeth driver again in
2.6.16-ck9 kernel, and it has not caused any machine hangs so far (2 days).