[vortex] Possible FAQ: 3c905C driver

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000, Sam Wilson wrote:

> Firstly, apologies as this maybe a FAQ ...

In fact, you're the first to ask this question in clear! Beware, you'll be
the one remembered for starting the war 8-)

> We currently run the driver that comes with RedHat's kernel 2.2.16-3
> (3Com's 1.0.0d). We've experienced some random weirdness with networking
> (in general) recently, including an apparent "dropping dead" of the
> network driver under load (namely restarting named). Sorry, no output
> specific to this problem at this stage :(

What are the symptoms of the "dropping dead" case ? How are you noticing
it ? Do you need to do anything to get it running again (like an "ifconfig
eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up") or it just recovers by itself ? If it just
recovers, what is the time needed for this ?
What is the load and how do you measure it ? What does "namely restarting
named" means ?
Are you running in 100Mbit FullDuplex mode ?

> Anyway, to start at the basics, which is the best driver to be using
> (mainly, in terms of stability)?
>
> o 3com's 1.0.0d (as in RedHat kernel 2.2.16-3)
> o 3Com's 1.0.0i

I have used an earlier 3Com driver (I think that it was 1.0.0c), but only
for a couple of days. No stability problem, but when using it in a
cluster, I got slighlty lower performance than the other
(below) driver. However, at that time, Andrew was not yet involved in the
development and the "newest" driver (about 1 year old) was 0.99L from
Donald.

> o Andrew Morton's 16Aug00 (as in 2.2.17-pre17)
> o Andrew Morton's 24May00 (as in RedHat kernel 2.2.16-3)

>From stability point of view, these should be almost equivalent. AFAIK, 
the latest (from 2.2.17-pre18) has some small modifications to handle some
Tx reset cases, but when using a switch, these conditions should not
appear. As this driver is currently distributed with the kernel, it gets
quite a lot of testing...
I personally only use these two (the RedHat one on our desktops and the
latest one plus my polling mode modifications for 905C on our clusters).

> o Donald Becker's v0.99Qk 7/5/2000
> o Donald Becker's v0.99Ra 8/7/2000

The first is the "stable" driver, the latest is the "test" one. AFAIK, the
differences between these two were related to PCCard/miniPCI handling,
maybe Donald is able to tell more about them. As this driver is not
currently distributed with the kernel, I have no ideea how many people use
it. In case you decide to choose one of these, please be sure to read the
"Usage instructions", the "Installation" sub-chapter from:
	http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html

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