Re: network freeze with nforce-A939 integrated rhine card

From: David Lang
Date: Sat May 13 2006 - 01:20:51 EST


On Fri, 12 May 2006, Roger Luethi wrote:

On Thu, 11 May 2006 22:59:44 -0700, David Lang wrote:
I haven't had time to go back and find where is started (my prior kernel
was 2.6.15-rc7), but with 2.6.17-rc1/2/3/4 I've been running into a
problem where when transfering large amounts of data (trying to ftp a TB

"where is started" sounds as if it used to work at some point. In your
second posting, however, you note that the problem goes back at least to
2.6.13. So are there any kernels known not to exhibit the problem you
described?

when I posted this origionally I thought it was new in 2.6.17-rc, however since my testing with older kernels hasn't found me a working one yet I suspect that other factors have been involved with makeing it work.

these failures have been on multi-gig files ftp'd from the raid array on my machine to the raid array on the replacement machine. In the past I've sucessfully transfered similar sized files to/from my tivo (slow network), my laptop (slow drive), and smaller sets of files to single drives on other systems (7200rpm drives, but not to arrays).

as I type this I'm starting a test going from a single drive on this machine to the raid array on the remote machine to transfer ~84G of data. My suspicion is that this is going to work.

when I say shut down I mean that it looses link and requires powering down
the box (hard power down, not just power off from the front panel),
disabling the network card in the BIOS, booting (as far as lilo is
enough), powering down again, enabling the card and booting again.

So there are two problem areas: 1) the chip hangs itself without the driver
noticing and 2) the BIOS fails to bring the chip back to life afterwards.

yes

there is no indication of trouble before the halt (it's transfering at
full speed), the only think in the log is
May 11 22:23:57 david kernel: eth0: link down
May 11 22:24:00 david kernel: eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa
0xCDE1
May 11 22:24:22 david kernel: eth0: link down

if I don't do the disable/enable in the bios cycle and just power cycle
the system the card does not initialize properly (ethtool reports
autonegotiation disabled, 10Mb. will generate an 'unsupported' error if I
try to enable the card)

Any difference in the kernel log when booting with (or ethtooling) a
comatose chip?

I haven't checked the boot logs, I'll do that. ethtool hasn't generated any logs that I've seen. after the current transfer finishes I'll trigger the bug and test this.

dlang@david:~$ /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 0204
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 1204
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 2204
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3204
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 4204
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 7204
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800 South]
00:08.0 RAID bus controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT374 (rev 07)
00:08.1 RAID bus controller: Triones Technologies, Inc. HPT374 (rev 07)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Olicom OC-2326 (rev 01)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [K8T800 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (rev 01)

Odd. This doesn't look at all like the list I'd expect from an nforce-A939.
I thought Nvidia devices featured rather prominently in the device lists of
nforce-based boards!?

you're right, it's the new server that has the nforce board. I'll have to check the motherboard version when I reboot it.

David Lang

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