[eepro100] is there a working driver for linux alpha

Michael Barnes mbarnes@compsci.wm.edu
Tue Apr 30 14:07:01 2002


On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 10:16:00AM -0600, Craig Tierney wrote:
> I have 144 alpha nodes, 2 way SMP each.  They all have the DE600
> compaq card installed (eepro100 compatible).  I am assuming you
> have the same one.

No, these are standard Intel PCI cards.

> We are using the same ethernet driver, but we are using the 2.4.14
> kernel.  We are not having any problems.  

I don't know if the kernel has anything to do with these problems or
not.  For right now, I'm stuck with the 2.4.9 kernel because the newer
ones have issues with the SCSI controler (Symbios Logic 53c1010).  The
kernel panics because it cannot find a harddisk.

> If you want to try the e100 driver, I suggest that you download
> the latest redhat kernel.  It is included in their 3rd party drivers.
> I have never tried it myself, but I suspect that you might have
> a chance at getting that working.

I've done this as well, but the driver loads after insmod and negotiates
the connection, but no data will go over the wire.  This is the same
behavior I found with the e1000 (gigabit) driver, for a e1000 card.  (I
have not found a gigabit card for the alpha either).

Mike

> > I have a 60 node alpha cluster (SMP with 2 processors in each node)
> > with eepro100's in them that periodicly have NETDEV timeouts with
> > moderate file transfers (~45Meg).  I'm using kernel 2.4.9 with the
> > supplied driver:
> > 
> > eepro100.c:v1.09j-t
> > eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 Modified by Andrey V. Savochkin
> > 
> > So far I have tried to update the TX|RX_RING_SIZE to 64, updated drivers
> > from newer kernel sources, and the ones from scyld.  The ones from scyld
> > that I downloaded today load into the kernel fine, but I only get:
> > 
> > eth0: Transmit timed out: status 0000  0010 at 0/15 commands 0001a000 00020000 00030000.
> > [ snip ring dump ]
> > eth0: Restarting the chip...
> > Command 0070 was not accepted after 10001 polls!
> > Command 0010 was not immediately accepted, 10001 ticks!
> > 
> > Which repeats until I unload the driver.
> > 
> > I have also tried the e100 driver from Intel, but that does not work
> > either with Alphas.
> > 
> > So does anyone have any suggestions for getting the eepro100 driver
> > work on Alpha's or possibly another NIC that has functioning drivers?
> > (I have also used DECchip based cards, but those too are problematic
> > with negotiating 100FDX connections, even when forced).