[vortex] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out

[Gerrit Hannaert]

Thanks Andrew,

Unfortunately I've got a bit of a recursive problem it seems now: 

I am trying out Mosix, and Mosix refuses to boot properly without SMP
which appears to be a Linux bug. I reported this to the mosix list,
Amnon Shiloh answered the following:

> The bug is in Linux-2.4.5, in the "ioctl_by_bdev" routine of "fs/block_dev.c":
> it fails to initiailize the "inode_fake.i_bdev" field, which therefore contains
> a totally random value and the rest is a matter of luck.  It just happened to
> crash with MOSIX without SMP and not on other configurations.
> 
> The fix is not trivial - well, in this particular case of the RAM-disk,
> just to make it work we could place a dirty hack in the beginning of
> "rd_ioctl":
>         if(current->pid == 0)
>                 return(0);

So you see, I'm a bit stuck. I need SMP enabled to boot Mosix properly
(a 2.4.5 bug), but of course Mosix won't run reliably if the network
cards won't run reliably (for which I would need a non-SMP kernel),
which is also a linux bug.

Any creative suggestions? Would Linus/Alan Cox hear these pleas for
help? Incidentally I have tried the newer -ac series kernels but Mosix
wouldn't apply to them very cleanly, and I'm not really a C programmer.





Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> Gerrit Hannaert wrote:
> >
> > Jun 18 21:53:40 pc162 kernel: eth0: Interrupt posted but not delivered
> 
> Sigh.
> 
> This is a bug in the kernel's handling of the x86 APIC.
> Normally we see these reports for SMP machines.  In theory,
> it can happen with uniprocessor hardware if the kernel
> was compiled with the "Use IO-APIC on Uniprocessors" option.
> 
> Are you using that?
> 
> If so, please disable it and let us know.  You could alternatively
> try booting with the `noapic' LILO option.  I *think* this disables
> the APIC for IO-APIC-on-uniprocessors.
> 
> There's a workaround for this problem in the -ac kernels.
> Patches are getting sent to Linus - I think one will stick
> pretty soon.
> 
> -


Greetings,

-- 


--{Gerrit Hannaert}--

   IT Department, CropDesign N.V.
------------------------------------------