[vortex] Problems with 3c59x

[Donald Becker]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Bogdan Costescu wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Donald Becker wrote:
> 
> > > Dec 12 17:29:24 lapd eth0: Media selection timer tick happened, Autonegotiate full duplex.
> > > Dec 12 17:29:28 lapd eth1: Media selection timer tick happened, Autonegotiate full duplex.
> 
> Why this short time between timer ticks ? The unabridged logs show even 

I think that you missed "eth0" vs "eth1".

> > Ahhh, buglet.  This can never happen in normal use, but it can when the
> > Tx queue was full before being shut down.
> 
> Andrew fixed this in the kernel driver about a year or so ago :-)
> I think that it was even mentioned on this list, but I might be wrong...

I believe that this is a different bug, although that fix might have
addressed both.  Previously there was a race condition during
operation.  Here the Tx queue is full (tx_full = 1) when the
interface is shut down, and the variable isn't cleared.  This can almost
never occur when interrupts are working.

> > Bogdan, do you know where there is a listing of which APIC bugs were
> > fixed when?
> 
> I don't know of such a list to exist; the fixes seem to come from 
> different persons (from the Changelogs) so I don't think that such a list 
> could exist...

I see that there is a fresh set of similar APIC bug reports this week on
LKML.  My guess is that there is a brand-spanking-new bug here.

> And from Cosmin's message:
> > 2 CPUs x 1GHz Intel PIII
> 
> I was just about to ask about the machine, because it was never mentioned 
> if it's a SMP one (which I believed to be after seeing the "Tx ring full" 
> messages)

That was a key for the old race condition, but SMP machines are also the
ones that have APIC misconfiguration.

> This sometimes helped to aleviate interrupt related problems - generally 
> speaking, nothing specific to this board. If the BIOS has the option of 
> MPS level, could you try changing from 1.4 to 1.1 or vice-versa ?

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993