[eepro100] Thin Client EEPRO100 issue.

[Kam Panesar]

Hiya, At the moment we are currently trying to use a thin client device
which utilises the Intel EEPRO100 network card and we seem to be suffering
from a specific issue when trying to use the device on a 10Mbits network.
The device appears to work on a 100Mbits network. We are using the LTSP
model of booting a thin client where we utilise the PXE bootstrap for the
Intel EEPRO100 whereby it searches for a dhcp address, gets one and then
proceeds to download the kernel into memory and give a KDE 1.1.2 desktop.
The thin client utilises software on the server via NFS. What seems to
happen is that although a desktop may appear as some random point the device
will just lock up and when you look at a text console there are a series of
eepro100 cmd_timeout errors. Of course the device is now completely locked
up and only rebooting will release the client. Of course the same thing is
bound to happen at a later stage ! We tried to resolve this by using the
latest version of NFS3 for Linux on both the client and server end and we
are still getting the same problem. The kernel level on the server is 2.2.18
(have also tried 2.4.17) and on the client we are using a 2.4.4 kernel (have
also used 2.4.17). As I mentioned above we don't seem to experience the same
issue on a 100Mbit network, but having said that we did for a while use the
same technology on a 10Mbit network without any issues. The only difference
between the 2 speeds (10Mbit and 100Mbit) is that when we go for the 10Mbit
network, we are relying on NT server 4.0 DHCP manager to use boot options 60
and 66 to specify the bootfile server name and the bootfile to load. When
using a 100Mbit network we are using a Linux server as the dhcp server. We
tried to use a 10Mbit linux server to do the same job as the NT server and
we experienced the same issues . i.e eepro100 command timeouts. I apologise
if this is not perhaps supplying you with the appropriate information but
would welcome any comments/suggestions which may help me resolve this issue.
Many thanks 

============================================
Kam Panesar
bSt Technical Infrastructure
Hill House Hammond
Direct Dial : (0117) 905 1504
Fax : (0117) 905 1851
Email : kpanesar@hhh.co.uk
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