[eepro100] No Resources / RX Buffers bug

[Jim Reese]

In my opinion it's clearly a bug. Google is seeing the same problem at
the same frequency (~10%). For the time being we've written a few init
scripts: one runs before the network is started and forks a process to
see that a script that runs AFTER the network has been started
actually ran. If not, the first script reboots the machine.

It's really a hack, but it does work.

Nonetheless, we would love to have this problem solved given that we
have > 6000 machines with eepro NICs.

One note: We seem to have this problem ONLY with the eepro100 NICs
built into the 810E motherboards and not with the standalone NIC.

Jim

Jim Reese
Chief Operations Engineer
Google, Inc.
jim@google.com

--- From the cerebral cortex of Derek Glidden came ---
> 
> Hello,
> I've been reading through the list archives and scanning various
> websites for information regarding this (apparently well-known) EEpro100
> driver "issue."  We've been having lots of problems lately with this
> driver in recent kernels using hardware that has proved to be extremely
> stable in the past.  
> 
> We're consistently seeing lockups during boot on our machines from this
> "Card reports no resources/Card reports no RX buffers" problem.  This
> has been occuring in about 10% or so of the times we've booted machines
> that have EEPro cards in them.  Quite a few of them have been working
> consistently flawlessly for at least the last year or so without any
> problems whatsoever until upgrading to newer kernels, so it seems to be
> tied to more recent versions of the EEPro driver in recent versions of
> the kernel.  I think we've started to see problems since about 2.2.14 or
> so.  If the card actually initializes properly, the machine is extremely
> stable; if it does not, the only way out is to Big Red Button the thing,
> which can be extremely difficult when the machine is remotely colocated.

<snip>

> Can anyone please clarify what's known and what's assumed about this
> situation (i.e. is it a known bug?  Is it not a bug?  Is it maybe a bug
> but only with certain hardware?  Is it only a bug for certain people
> with bad karma?) and what the recommended course of action is to work
> out this problem?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- 
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> With Microsoft products, failure is not           Derek Glidden
> an option - it's a standard component.      http://3dlinux.org/
> Choose your life.  Choose your            http://www.tbcpc.org/
> future.  Choose Linux.              http://www.illusionary.com/
> 
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