[eepro100] NFS errors w/diskless booting

[Patrick Corrigan]

We are building a linux cluster of 20 clients and one host. The clients
are diskless(and without video cards) and use the etherboot package to
boot from the host.  During the boot sequence, I see the message "NFS:
task 58 can't get a request slot" and  booting stops.  I've been
troubleshooting this all week long and found very interesting results.
When a video card, or even just a PCI extender card is inserted into the
5th PCI slot(ASUS K7V), but not any other PCI slot, the node will boot
fine every time.  I am using kernel 2.2.16 compiled with gcc 2.9.1.66
from Redhat 6.2.  The eepro100 v1.09j driver from 2.2.16 is compiled
into the kernel as it must be for this configuration.  I have also tried
v1.10a of this driver.  Any ideas?

Patrick Corrigan
Linux NetworX