system lockup with RTL8139

[Ron Luse]

> More messages might be changing the timing, especially by causing more
> activity that allows the card to have more PCI bus bandwidth.

That's consistant with my observations.  I have tried different tests to 
see what seems to trigger the problem.  The tests that involve no I/O in the
"busy task" don't seem to cause the problem.  Tasks that do some level
of I/O will eventually lead to the interface hang.

> Perhaps under heavy PCI bus load something is happening that corrupts the Rx
> packet list.  The status we are seeing (what are the exact numbers?) is
> actually packet data, or something of the sort.

Here's an example of the messages.  The Sound: messages are from the "real"
app.  Other busy work can cause the same symptoms.

> Sep 15 17:23:10 pizzabox kernel: Sound: Recording overrun 
> Sep 15 17:23:10 pizzabox last message repeated 2 times
> Sep 15 17:47:55 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status cccccccc! 
> Sep 15 17:47:55 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status 4c4c414d! 
> Sep 15 17:47:55 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status 4820413c! 
> Sep 15 17:47:56 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status 206c6169! 
> Sep 15 17:47:56 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status 20393939! 
> Sep 15 17:48:01 pizzabox kernel: eth0: Oversized Ethernet frame, status 746e692d! 

> I'll change the RxTooLong check so that it resets the Rx hardware...
>    ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/kern-2.3/rtl8139.c

I made an attempt at that by copying some RX reset code from somewhere else.
I'm looking forward to trying your modifications.  I have down-loaded
1.08g, and will build it.  May not get to it until Monday.


Thanks.


Ron Luse
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