[eepro100] 'Card Reports No Resources' errors, with a twist...

[Basil Hussain]

Hi all,

I've just recently rebuilt a machine (after problems with the IDE drive in
it). Anyway, it's ended up with a different motherboard and hard drive and
it now runs RedHat 6.2 (kernel 2.2.14-5.0) rather than 6.0.

During the few days of setting it up, it was solid as a rock. This was
during connection to a simple Intel 10Mbps hub. However, now it is in
production use and connected to a 100Mbps D-Link hub, I am getting a strange
situation.

I have been getting batches of these errors in my system logs:

Dec  4 17:51:41 spectrum kernel: eth0: card reports no resources.

Usually, 8 of them at a time. They don't coincide with a system hang or
period of peak traffic. What they do coincide with, however (and I spent
ages racking my brain before I realised this!), is a remote port scan of the
machine using the NMap utility. (I like to test my security...)

Why would the kernel be giving me errors on a simple networking action like
that? Is this a bug in the driver? Should I upgrade? How do I find out which
version of the driver I'm currently running?

If I do need to upgrade, I'm running a bare setup on this server (for
security) with no development utilities or compilers - so I'll need a binary
distribution. Is there one?

Regards,

------------------------------------------------
Basil Hussain (basil.hussain@specialreserve.net)


P.S. Here's some info on the card. It's an Intel PRO/100+, i82559 chipset
(masquerading as i82557 by the looks of it).

[root@spectrum basil]# /usr/sbin/eepro100-diag -f -eam
eepro100-diag.c:v2.02 7/19/2000 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Intel i82557 (or i82558) EtherExpressPro100B adapter at
0xec00.
i82557 chip registers at 0xec00:
  00000050 0d849810 00000000 00080002 18250081 00000600
  No interrupt sources are pending.
   The transmit unit state is 'Suspended'.
   The receive unit state is 'Ready'.
  This status is normal for an activated but idle interface.
Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 EEPROM contents:
  Station address 00:D0:B7:21:EC:82.
  Board assembly 721383-008, Physical connectors present: RJ45
  Primary interface chip i82555 PHY #1.
 MII PHY #1 transceiver registers:
  3000 782d 02a8 0154 05e1 0081 0000 0000
  0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
  0202 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
  0012 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000.
 MII PHY #1 transceiver registers:
   3000 782d 02a8 0154 05e1 0081 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0a02 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000.
 Basic mode control register 0x3000: Auto-negotiation enabled.
 Basic mode status register 0x782d ... 782d.
   Link status: established.
   Capable of  100baseTx-FD 100baseTx 10baseT-FD 10baseT.
   Able to perform Auto-negotiation, negotiation complete.
 Vendor ID is 00:aa:00:--:--:--, model 21 rev. 4.
   No specific information is known about this transceiver type.
 I'm advertising 05e1: Flow-control 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx 10baseT-FD
10baseT
   Advertising no additional info pages.
   IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD protocol.
 Link partner capability is 0081: 100baseTx.
   Negotiation did not complete.