From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: e1000e: sporadic "hardware error"s with Intel 82563EB on Supermicro X7DB3 Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 23:36:30 +0200 Message-ID: <20081008233630.53d26853@speedy> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Hillier, Gernot " , , , "Allan, Bruce W" , "Hockert, Jeff W" , "Graham, David" To: "Graham, David" Return-path: Received: from mail.vyatta.com ([76.74.103.46]:54419 "EHLO mail.vyatta.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756888AbYJHVgj (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Oct 2008 17:36:39 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 08:25:49 -0700 "Graham, David" wrote: > Hi Gernot, > > Thanks for reporting this issue. We have witnessed this in our labs too, > only on platforms that have BMC management firmware. I'm very familiar > with the problem, and believe that we have fixed it, though the > application of the fix may not be simple. The problem is a result of > improper synchronization between the platform FW and the e1000e driver > when they attempt concurrent access to LAN resources, and fixes were > made both on the driver side, and on the FW side. On some platforms a > simple driver update resolves the problem, others require FW fixes too. > > The 0.2.0 driver in 2.6.25 has no fixes for this problem, and so I am > not surprised that you see it there. The first set of changes for this > issue are already in the 0.3.3.3-k2 driver that you are still seeing the > problem with on 2.6.26, so either those changes are not good, or your > issue requires one of the additional fixes. > > There have been further improvements made to the driver synchronization > code since the 0.3.3.3-k2 driver, and it is possible that a newer driver > would resolve the issue. It'd be good for us to know if that's the case. > The driver version is not yet (AFAICS) upstream, but is already > available in the standalone e1000e-0.4.1.7 driver on sourceforge. > (google "sourceforge e1000e"). Would you be able to try that, as a first > step ? Repeat rant heard from many users and vendors: Why does Intel continue to not do driver development in mainline kernel?