Frozen on 'bringing up eth0 interface'

[Donald Becker]

On Sat, 4 Sep 1999, Josh Estelle wrote:

> i'm running linux mandrake 6.0, kernel 2.2.9.

Note: support questions for RedHat derived system should be sent to RedHat.

> i want to recompile my kernel mainly to add sound support, but also to
> use the lastest kernel (2.2.12)

Did you try without sound support?

> after recompiling my machine boots to the 'brining up eth0 interface'
> line and freezes there.  Nothing will break out of the freeze,
> ultimately I have to do a power reset.
> I tried compiling the eepro100 driver as a module rather than directly
> into the kernel, when this booted it gives a 'delaying eth0
> initialization' error, then when i use 'insmod' and 'modprobe', and
> 'ifconfig' to bring up the module and then the interface it freezes on
> the 'ifconfig eth0 up' step.
> 
> I thought perhaps the problem related to the following which is
> mentioned on the website:
> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/eepro100.html
> 
> START QUOTE:
> The EEPro100 board always uses the same IRQ as an Adaptec 2940
...

No.  The effect of this bug in the SCSI driver is that the eepro100 driver
cannot use the interrupt.

The problem that you are likely having is that some other device is
improperly raising an interrupt on the IRQ line.  The eepro100 interrupt
handler is repeatedly called, since nothing is clearing the interrupt.
Any PCI device driver will have the same problem.

I used to include a check for this in my drivers, but it could be fooled by
a very active devive sharing the interrupt line.

The work-around is to put the eepro100 on a different IRQ line.
The fix is to track down the device that is raising an interrupt on an IRQ
line that it hasn't registered a handler for.  (Or, in the case of
ISA-connected device, the BIOS has incorrectly assigned the IRQ to both an
ISA device and a PCI device.)

Donald Becker					  becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center,  Greenbelt, MD.  20771
301-286-0882	     http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/people/becker/whoiam.html