Re: 2.0.3x -- hanging network interfaces

G.W. Wettstein (greg@wind.enjellic.com)
Thu, 22 Oct 1998 00:18:57 -0500


On Oct 20, 2:25pm, Matt Kemner wrote:
} Subject: Re: 2.0.3x -- hanging network interfaces

> On Sat, 17 Oct 1998, Chris Evans wrote:

> chris> We've recently got a tulip based card, and we see network hangs (the kind
> chris> fixable by taking the interface down then up). I have two questions.

> I saw a similar problem with a tulip card in my proxy server, which
> is under a LOT of network load (2 million requests/day) - the card
> would simply stop working, but if I ifconffiged it down/up again it
> was fine.. The problem turned out to be hardware rather than
> software - it was plugged into a rather cheap non-switching hub,
> which I replaced with a 16x10Mb+2x10/100Mb switch (by Netgear, and
> the tulip is also a Netgear) and I haven't seen the problem since
> (plus the card now runs at 100Mb full duplex, VERY fast :))

> Hope this helps you solve your problem.

I find this a somewhat interesting observation. I have been reporting
problems with the epic based Etherpower II NIC's on our production
IMAP server running 2.0.35. We have a pair of these cards sharing an
interrupt line.

During periods of high load the eth0 card wedges itself. The eth1
interface remain active. Downing and upping both interfaces clears
the problem. We have been blaming SMP/interrupt problems but we had
28 days of trouble-free operation. Our first incident of wedging
occurred when the Bay 450 switch that eth0 was plugged into was
replaced with a 10Mbit/sec shared media hub.

I have been running a uniprocessor kernel on the box for 2 days and we
have not had a wedging problem. This would seem to implicate SMP but
I find the whole situation after reading the above notes somewhat more
than coincidental.

> - Matt Kemner

Greg

}-- End of excerpt from Matt Kemner

As always,
Dr. G.W. Wettstein Enjellic Systems Development - Specialists in
4206 N. 19th Ave. intranet based enterprise information solutions.
Fargo, ND 58102 WWW: http://www.enjellic.com
Phone: 701-281-1686 EMAIL: greg@wind.enjellic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it.
Geniuses remove it.
-- Perliss' Programming Proverb #58
SIGPLAN National, Sept. 1982

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/