Intel EtherExpress Pro Transmitter crash with 2.2.9 (Ipv6 related?)

Osma Ahvenlampi oa-lists@spray.fi
Tue May 25 00:43:33 1999


Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:
> I just upgraded a machine from 2.2.5 to 2.2.9 and had the ethernet driver
> fail completely within about 4 hours. I suspect this may have something to
> do with the fact that I enabled IPv6 support and connected a tunnel to the
> machine (it was live on the 6bone at the time) These are the messages I
> got:
> 
> May 24 05:33:10 pandora kernel: eth0: Trying to restart the transmitter... 
> May 24 05:33:20 pandora kernel: eth0: Transmit timed out: status 0050
> 0000 at 36558/36574 command 000c0000. 

It has to do with multicast packets. eepro100 driver is unstable when
using the hardware multicast address filter on the card, so you must
disable (most of) the filter with:

options eepro100 multicast_filter_limit=3

in /etc/conf.modules (if your driver is built as a module). If that
still doesn't work, make the limit 0. If you STILL see the same
problem, perhaps you're speaking of a multiprocessor machine and you
should switch the card entirely.

This is a FAQ, and will show up in the list archives every two weeks
at a minimum. The problem has always been there, and regardless of
comments in the driver source to the contrary, no fix for it has been
effective.

-- 
Osma Ahvenlampi