Re: [PATCH] forcedeth: msi interrupts

[Karen Shaeffer <shaeffer@neuralscape.com>]

On Sat, Jun 07, 2008 at 06:33:12PM -0700, Karen Shaeffer wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 07, 2008 at 12:28:35PM -0700, Ayaz Abdulla wrote:
> > Karen,
> > 
> > Is the switch in forced mode? That would explain the mismatch. I can
> > look into a fix to workaround the hang.
> > 
> > Please open a bugzilla bug as you recommend. Emails get deleted after a
> > couple of weeks and it is better to have a permanent location to track
> > issues like this.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Ayaz
> 
> Hi Ayaz,
> Thank you for responding.
> No, the switch vlan port is configured for 100 Mb autoneg on. The NIC
> is configured with a boot time script using ethtool for 100 Mb autoneg on.
> The result is always the same. The switch port links at 100 Mb full duplex,
> and the NIC links at 100 Mb half duplex.
> 
> One can configure the NIC for 100 Mb autoneg off full duplex. And then
> the link mismatch does not occur. And I have never seen the failure
> in this case. But end users in the field sometimes just don't pay attention
> and end up with the mismatch, so the failure was first discovered by an
> end user.
> 
> At 1000 Mb, the link mismatch never happens. I've only seen this failure at
> 100 Mb.
> 
> The bug has been opened with ID 10885. I don't work with that project anymore,
> but I'll definitely follow up with the appropriate folks, when this issue
> is resolved. I am sure they will be very interested in a resolution.

Hi,
One more detail. I personally reproduced the NIC mismatch and the NIC TX
failure many times in the lab on 5 different Netra servers, using quite
a few different kernel.org and RHEL kernels. It happened on every kernel I
tested, with 32 and 64 bit compiles. And it was produced in a data center
using the 2.6.22.10 kernel several times completely independent of me. For
more details, please see the bug ID 10885.

And I need to clarify that the last kernel I tested this on was actually
linux-2.6.24-rc8-git6. I mistated in the bug that I observed this failure
on the 2.6.25.4 kernel. That is inaccurate. I don't know, if it exist in
the 2.6.25.4 kernel, because I never tested that kernel. My error.

Thanks,
Karen
-- 
 Karen Shaeffer
 Neuralscape, Palo Alto, Ca. 94306
 shaeffer@neuralscape.com  http://www.neuralscape.com