[vortex-bug] Problem with 3Com 3C905B 100bTX: (transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000)

[Milan Votava]

>Livio Baldini Soares wrote:
> >
> > eth0: Tx Ring full, refusing to send buffer.
> > eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000.
> > Flags; bus-master 1, full 1; dirty 41474248 current 41474264.
>
>Are you really using 2.2.17, or is it a 2.2.17-pre?
>
>David Hinds and I have done a lot of work on this issue over the last
>few weeks and I believe we now have it fully understood and fixed. But
>you'll need 2.2.17 (no prereleases) to pick up the changes.
>
>If you're really using 2.2.17 then that's a bit of a bummer. This
>timeout can still occur, but it's not a driver problem. You can
>genuinely get into a situation where the LAN is so busy the poor old
>card can't send a single packet for half a second. But it recovers
>fine.
>
>So. Please upgrade to 2.2.17 proper, or send the full kernel log
>output, along with a description of how frequently this occurs.


Yesterday I have upgraded to the final 2.2.17 (from 2.2.15) because of :

Sep 28 16:11:38 www kernel: eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000.

messages in the system log. What's more important, system doesn't recover 
from the timeout, it simply stops responding to any network traffic after 
while (and have to be restarted to work again for another 12-16h).

Our machine is SMP dual PII box,  the network card is identified as a:

Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel: 3c59x.c 16Aug00 Donald Becker and others 
http://www.
scyld.com/network/vortex.html
Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel: eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 
0xe800,  00:1
0:5a:48:0f:e9, IRQ 17
Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel:   8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split, 
autoselect/Auton
egotiate interface.
Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel:   MII transceiver found at address 24, status 786d.
Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel:   MII transceiver found at address 0, status 786d.
Sep 26 20:55:10 www kernel:   Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame 
rece
ives.


Help! :) I'm going to buy an Intel 10/100Mb card tomorrow...

Milan