[vortex] 3c905c hangs w/ "transmit timed out"

[Bryan K. Wright]

Hi folks,

	I have a couple of small clusters made of Linux boxes with
Asus A7V266-e motherboards and 3c905c network cards.  Every few
days, I find that one or more of the machines has lost network
connectivity.  When this happens, the machine acts as if the 
network driver is hung, and keeps spitting out the message:

 eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000

The only solution is to reboot.

	I've tried several different versions of the network
driver, with the same results.  Currently I'm using:

"3c59x.c:v0.99V 1/28/2002 Donald Becker, becker@scyld.com"

	I've also tried several different kernels, including
2.2.14, 2.2.15, 2.2.16 and 2.2.19, with the same results.

	These motherboards are based on the VIA chipset,
and I know there are some PCI latency problems with this, so
I've also tried playing around with the latencies a little.
For example:

 #"open up" the PCI bus by allowing fairly long bursts for all devices, 
 # increasing performance
 setpci -v -d '*:*' latency_timer=b0
 #maximize latency timer for network cards, allowing them to transmit
 #more data per burst, preventing buffer over/underrun conditions:
 setpci -v -s 00:0f.0 latency_timer=ff

(stolen from http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-hw2)
This didn't make any difference either.

	The hangs appear to be associated with high network traffic.
We have several other small clusters based on different motherboards
and older 3c509 cards, and these don't have this problem.  Uptimes
for nodes in the other clusters are typically on the order of a year.

	I'd appreciate any suggestions.  Since network cards are
so cheap now, I'm considering just scrapping the 3c905s and replacing
them with something else.

					Thanks,
					Bryan
-- 
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Bryan Wright                |"If you take cranberries and stew them like 
Physics Department          | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes 
University of Virginia      | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901  |			
(434) 924-7218              |         bryan@virginia.edu
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