[vortex] NETDEV WATCHDOG

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Harald Hannelius wrote:

> I get a lot of these, and my machine freezes. 

It freezes for some time and then comes back or it freezes completely ?

> The problem seem to happen more often when playing mp3's over nfs :)

I do that too 8-).... but in a switched full duplex environment.

> The nic is connected to a 10Mbps hub.

This is the most important detail. You have a device that is most likely
overloaded. Do you have many computers connected to this hub ? What is
their activity ?

> What does these mean? Anything I can do?

It means that the transmit queue got full and didn't drain for some time.
This means that the partner (the hub in your case) was busy and didn't
accept packets. As it's a slow (10Mbps) hub (as opposed to a switch) this
is normal to happen for high traffic.

You can try to increase TX_RING_SIZE (to allow for a larger queue) or
TX_TIMEOUT (to allow for more time before the Tx timeout occurs) and
recompile the driver. Both these modifications decrease the probability of
Tx timeouts, but do not eliminate them completely. The best solution would
be to buy another hub (100MBit) or even better a switch.

Sincerely,

Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De