Compaq AP400 & Onboard eepro100

Chris.Hughes@barclayscapital.com Chris.Hughes@barclayscapital.com
Fri May 7 05:13:16 1999


Hi,

  I installed Redhat 6 (kernel 2.2.5) on a Compaq AP400 (PII 400MHz
workstation) and (after I'd left for the day) it spammed the network with
broadcast packets (and crashed).  This appears to be something to do with
the power saving mode of this model:  On observation, the ethernet adapter
stops responding at the same time as the monitor goes into power saving
mode.  Hit the keyboard and it sometimes comes back to life, and sometimes
goes into the 'transmit timed out' 'restarting the transmitter' loop I've
seen reported by other people. Coworkers here with Linux installed on this
same type of machine, but with power saving disabled, have no problems at
all.

 Comparing with NT4 (all I have here atm), the power saving feature never
kicks in, even if it is enabled in the BIOS.

 Can anyone explain (or verify) the broadcast spamming of the network
problem that I've seen here (and apparently alsoexperienced by another
coworker on a different AP400) ?   I can understand the driver not knowing
about this power saving mode, but is it causing the spamming?  I'd like to
be able to explain this problem, as currently Linux has been banned from the
network.

Thanks,

Chris

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information about Barclays Capital, please
visit our web site at http://www.barcap.com.

Internet communications are not secure and therefore the Barclays Group
does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message.
Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do 
not necessarily represent those of the Barclays Group unless otherwise 
specifically stated.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------