[vortex] 3c905 hanging when network load is high

[Markus Schaub]

Am 14 Jan 2002 schrieb Bogdan Costescu:
> > But in my mind, it should go away automatically in this case, as
> > the disk doesn't generate any more interrupts when the network is
> > slow?
>
> When the transmit timeout occurs, a full ring is normally sent. This
> might in turn generate another burst of interrupts when again one or
> more interrupts might get lost...
> Loosing interrupts situations are generally hard to
> diagnose. Bringing the interface "down" then "up" dissasociates then
> associates again the interrupt handler; this clears up interrupt
> status.

I've done some tests in the last week:
May lisa be the slow server and maggie be the fast client.

maggie:# mount lisa:/data /mnt
maggie:# cat /dev/zero > /mnt/file
-> timeout
maggie:# cat /mnt/file > /dev/null
-> ok

lisa:# mount maggie:/data /mnt
lisa:# cat /dev/zero > /mnt/file
-> ok
lisa:# cat /mnt/file > /dev/null
->timeout

So it couldn`t be the hard disk which is `stealing' interrupts. So is
the NIC too fast for the whole system (I made a mistake in my first
mail: it's only a P60)?

Markus