Call me flaming, but as a sys-admin, I think I have a right to
be in such a state. I'm getting a little tired of people tinker-
ing with the DEC Tulip (21041) driver. I've seen 2.1.xx kernels
return weird information on an ifconfig, such as that the card
has sent out -382928429138 packets, but yet (!!!) still continues
to work as if nothing was flawed. Too odd for me.
Myself, like many sys-admins out there, use Kensington EtherRx
cards, which use the DEC 21041 chipset. Excellent chip, too.
These cards work flawlessly under 2.0.30 (without modifications
or pre-patches installed). No errors. No weirdness. Nothing but
pure happiness comes from the kernel. These are PCI cards: in
my case, PnP is obviously disabled.
However, when pre-patch-2 is installed, the kernel decides to
inform us that it has heartburn.
Easy solution: Don't install the pre-patches. Wise idea, 'cept
for the fact that I've seen strange occurances of "swapper"
giving kernel errors. This hasn't happened more than twice,
and the machine doesn't even halt (it continues to work as if
nothing ever happened). Therefore I was hoping the pre-patches
fixed this problem.
I've included a log taken from /var/log/syslog when our
main server booted up with the pre-patch-2 installed against
a 100% clean 2.0.30 kernel. Take a look at the ethernet side
of the log.
gcc 2.7.2.1, libc 5.4.23.
Any comments or feedback is appreciated greatly. If you need
more information from me, just Email.
-- | Jeremy Chadwick yoshi@parodius.com | | System/Network/Security Administrator yoshi@dynamik.com | | http://yoshi.parodius.com/ yoshi@javajnt.com |-- LOG HERE --
Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: BIOS query detected 32768KB RAM. Report errors to lma@varesearch.com Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Total RAM size was detected using BIOS function int 15h, ah=88h. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Console: 16 point font, 400 scans Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Console: colour VGA+ 80x25, 1 virtual console (max 63) Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: pcibios_init : BIOS32 Service Directory structure at 0x000fbb70 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: pcibios_init : BIOS32 Service Directory entry at 0xfc000 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: pcibios_init : PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfc030 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Probing PCI hardware. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Calibrating delay loop.. ok - 59.80 BogoMIPS Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Memory: 31008k/32768k available (624k kernel code, 384k reserved, 752k data) Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: This processor honours the WP bit even when in supervisor mode. Good. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Swansea University Computer Society TCP/IP for NET3.034 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Checking 386/387 coupling... Ok, fpu using exception 16 error reporting. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Checking 'hlt' instruction... Ok. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Linux version 2.0.30 (root@aitsu) (gcc version 2.7.2.1) #1 Fri Jul 11 04:54:11 PDT 1997 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: hda: WDC AC31600H, 1549MB w/128kB Cache, LBA, CHS=787/64/63 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Started kswapd v 1.4.2.2 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: tulip.c:v0.76 4/22/97 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: eth0: DEC 21041 Tulip at 0x6000, 21041 mode, 00 c0 f0 15 f8 47, IRQ 10 Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: THIS IS AN ALPHA TEST DRIVER. Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: The following verbose information is emitted for Jul 11 05:16:51 aitsu kernel: bug reports on media selection. Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: eth0:21041 Media information at 30, default media 0800 (Autosense). Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: eth0: 21041 media 00 (10baseT), csr13 0004 csr14 0000 csr15 0000. Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: eth0: 21041 media 00 (10baseT), csr13 0000 csr14 0000 csr15 0000. Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Partition check: Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: hda: hda1 hda2 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly. Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Adding Swap: 66524k swap-space (priority -1) Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: This is a 386/486 PCI system, setting cache alignment to 204800. Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address c0000000 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: current->tss.cr3 = 01e22000, Lr3 = 01e22000 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: *pde = 00102067 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: *pte = 00000027 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Oops: 0000 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: CPU: 0 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: EIP: 0010:[<0019221d>] Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: EFLAGS: 00010246 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: eax: 001bad38 ebx: 00256020 ecx: 0025d128 edx: 001bad38 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: esi: 0025d018 edi: 00000000 ebp: 00001002 esp: 01fa9ed4 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 002b gs: 002b ss: 0018 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Process ifconfig (pid: 33, process nr: 9, stackpage=01fa9000) Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Stack: 001bad38 001bad38 ffffffed 00001002 bffffd24 01fa9f44 0013afb5 01fa9f44 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: bffffd04 bffffd04 0000000a 00006000 001395e9 001bad38 001bad38 bffffd24 Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: 01fa9f64 0013a04a 001bad38 bffffd04 01dfd018 0804d4d2 bffffcd0 01e2728c Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Call Trace: [<0013afb5>] [<001395e9>] [<0013a04a>] [<0013a58f>] [<00150af3>] [<001368d9>] [<0012beff>] Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: [<0010a5f5>] Jul 11 05:16:52 aitsu kernel: Code: 66 8b 0f f6 c5 08 75 35 31 db 0f b6 57 02 89 54 24 20 39 d3 Jul 11 05:21:09 aitsu kernel: eth0: 21041 transmit timed out, status fc000000, CSR12 000000c4, CSR13 ffff0000, CSR14 ffffffff, resetting... Jul 11 05:21:24 aitsu kernel: eth0: 21041 transmit timed out, status fc000010, CSR12 000052c8, CSR13 ffffef09, CSR14 fffff7fd, resetting... Jul 11 05:22:09 aitsu kernel: eth0: 21041 transmit timed out, status fc000010, CSR12 000001c8, CSR13 ffffef05, CSR14 ffffff3f, resetting...
(these three 'eth0' errors display about 15 times more, then stop as if nothing ever happened -- eth0 at this point doesn't work, but the machine is booted and acts fine).