[vortex] Re: Problem with latest 3c59x drivers

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Fri, 12 Oct 2001, Franz Marini wrote:

>   seems like I have some obscure problem with the latest drivers.

I cc-ed the vortex mailing list and deleted the beowulf one. This
message seems to have nothing to do with clustering.

>   Right now I'm using version 0.99H, kernel 2.2.14-5.0 w/ tcp patch. It

You should upgrade your kernel. Up until 2.2.19, the kernels had some
security problems. 2.2.19 also provides an updated 3c59x driver. IIRC,
there is also a TCP patch for the 2.2.19 kernel from RedHat.

> seems to work, but, havin' some strange net problems (namely a number of
> fifo != 0 in /proc/net/dev , btw what's it ?)

I guess that's Rx FIFO; ifconfig would report them as "overruns".
Basically, the computer was too loaded and couldn't process the packets as
they arrived, so they were discarded. That is not necessarily a bad thing;
however, if this happens in a cluster, it lowers performance as these
packets have to be re-transmitted.

>   Now, 0.99U compiles flawlessly, and so does pci-scan.  The problem
> arises when I try to load it. It seems to load with no problem, but when I
> try to reach the network with, e.g., ping, it tells me the net is
> unreachable. And, with the new driver the switch tells me there is no nic
> attached to the port...

Ping also tells "network unreachable" when routing table is not set up
properly, but I supposed that this is already taken care of...

Please provide the detection message that the driver logs when
initializing (from "dmesg" output or /var/log/messages) along with any
other messages related to the network driver (prefixed with "eth0" or
similar in the logs).
Please also get from ftp://ftp.scyld.com/diag mii-diag and vortex-diag and
provide the output from these two programs.

What kind of switch do you have ? Not recognizing a link is not good...

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