e1000 TX unit hang (redux)

[shaw@vranix.com]

Hello All,

I have an e1000 card periodically misbehaving with the message 'Detected Tx 
unit hang'.   I've noticed this problem come up on netdev a couple of times 
and found the link to the bug tracking page--
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1463045&group_id=42302&atid=447449

I've also seen the patch that I believe was placed in 2.6.16 and subsequently 
brought down to 2.4.2? that seems to address this problem by creating a 
tx_timeout_factor relative to the speed of the NIC.  However, there is no 
mention of this workaround/fix on the bug at the link above and I haven't 
found any discussion of it here on netdev.   Auke recommends turning off tso 
to see if that resolves the problem and this also seems to work, though I 
have as yet not been able to confirm this and would prefer a more performance 
friendly fix..if available ;)

Would one of you pplease give an update on the status of the bug? If a cause 
was ever found and if the tx_timeout_factor was intended as a fix or 
temporary workaround?   I feel like I must have missed something, because I 
never saw the tx_timeout_factor patch go through netdev at all..

Thanks again for your help,
Shaw