[vortex] 3c905 hanging when network load is high

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Markus Schaub wrote:

> Sorry, I forgot that. There are no error messages.

Another idea might be "lost interrupts"; because the CPU is slow and the 
disk accesses also generate lots of interrupts, it may be possible that 
some interrupt requests are lost. In this case, the timer that checks 
media status will call the interrupt routine (normally once per minute) 
and some packets (a full ring normally) will be processed.

> The HDD is slowing down the network to 1,5-3 MB/s. Maybe that helps.

Well, you can separate disk and network transfer by copying files to 
/dev/null or from /dev/zero.

> The error mostly occurs when I use NFS. FTP is nearly ok.

Normally NFS sends many more small UDP packets for file handles 
and attributes and fragments while FTP (using TCP) creates maximum 
sized packets; so NFS creates a higher load (and higher number of 
interrupts).

-- 
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