3c900 hangs Linux?

[Henrik Carlqvist]

I have seen a problem with some Linux boxes, but have never seen it on
others. The thing in common with the problem boxes is that they have
3c900 (Boomerang) cards. I have never seen this happen on machines with
NE2000, SMC, Intel or any 3c50* network card.

The problem mostly, but not allways happens at heavy network load.
Mostly it has happened when I have done one or more rdist to or from the
machine which hangs.

This makes me beleive that the 3c900 is involved in some way.

What happens is this:

The machine totally "freezes". It does not respond to keyboard or mouse
movements. Pressing num-lock or caps-lock does not affect the keyboard
leds any more. The machine does not respond to ping. I have only been
able to get out from this with a hard reset.

Until about two weeks ago I had never found any error messages in logs
or on screen. Mostly some screensaver has prevented me from reading the
screen, and the last logs is probably lost at reboot. But that day I
found the console of a hanged problem machines filled with rows saying
the same:

Aiee: scheduling in interrupt 00123d2d

The problem doesn't come very often, maybe one machine hangs a month of
five machines with 3c900 running 24 hours a day. But it's still
annoying.

I have tried different kernels up to 2.0.30 and at several occasions
updated the file 3c59x.c, but it haven't helped. However I'm not running
any newer 3c59x.c than the "standard" one in 2.0.30 now.

Has anyone else seen this problem and/or does anyone know of a fix
except for replacing the cards? Please let me know if you want more info
about something.

regards Henrik