"Transmit timed out" with EtherExpress Pro100B

[Osma Ahvenlampi]

James Stevens <James.Stevens@jrcs.co.uk> writes:
> If you have any ideas I'd really appricate them. The error I get is
> "status 0050 command 0000" generated by the function
> "speedo_tx_timeout". I believe the transmitter _has_ hung, as the system
> locks totally when I remove the transmitter restart, and I suspect it is
> down to a bug in the chip I outlined in my previous e-mail.

okay.. My problem (same error message) went away with this patch:

--- eepro100-1.03.c     Wed Oct  7 13:01:38 1998
+++ eepro100.c  Wed Oct  7 13:01:20 1998
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
 static int max_interrupt_work = 20;

 /* Maximum number of multicast addresses to filter (vs. rx-all-multicast) */
-static int multicast_filter_limit = 64;
+static int multicast_filter_limit = 0;

 #include <linux/config.h>
 #ifdef MODULE

Try it, and see what happens. I think it multicast_filter_limit might
be safely set to 3 before problems start appearing, but I'm not
certain about it. I think I'll try it out now. Will find out if it
works in an hour at max..

Anyway, if you look into the code, you'll see the variable is used in
set_rx_mode, and there really shouldn't be any direct relation between
the two functions (set_rx_mode and speedo_start_xmit). These are both
entry points in the device structure, so they're functions called from
other parts of the kernel. Apparently the 100 lines beginning from
line 1487 is the cause of this problem. What it exactly does I really
don't have a clue of - I've never been good with hardware programming,
and without even any documentation, it might as well be a binary dump
for all I can understand of it. In any case, the commands are sent to
the device by appending them into the Tx queue, so it really isn't
inconceivable that the queue is getting corrupted. That would be
consistent with the physical evidence (massive packet flooding
monitored on other hosts on the network).

-- 
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Osma Ahvenlampi <oa@spray.fi>