[eepro100] Problem with eepro100 driver, ES40 SMP

[Craig Tierney]

I have been having problems with my eepro100 that came
with my ES40.  Here is the hardware and software setup:

- ES40 (4 proc/8 GB, 2 proc/2 GB)
- eepro100 (Actually either a clone or a COMPAQ remark of the eepro100)
- Extreme Networks GigE switch 
- HP Procurve Fast Ethernet switches (uplinked to each other via GigE switch)
- Linux 2.2.18.
- NFS mounts from an SGI IRIX (6.5.8).

I continue to get error messages like the following:

  eth0: Transmit timed out: status 0050  0c00 at 228770/228830 command 000c0000

I get this error when copying data over NFS.  The network will have
for awhile and then resume.  After a network pause, the mii-diag program 
reports: 

  Link status: previously broken, but now reestablished

Copying by scp doesn't seem to cause the problem.

This happens when I let the nodes auto-negotiate the following
settings:

  100 Mb/s Half-duplex
   10 Mb/s half-duplex
 
the 100 Mb/s full-duplex gives transfer rates of about 10 KB/s so
I don't know what is going on there.

I have also fixed the switch at 100 Mb/s Full, 100 Mb/s Half, and 10 Mb/s
full with no success.

I have set the transfer size for NFS v3 reads and writes to both 8192
and 32768 for TCP.  I have also tried NFS v3 UDP with read and write
sizes as 8192.

I have tried the NFS connection to a 100Mbs port on the SGI and
also a GigE port on the SGI.

What appears to work is NFS v3, tcp, read and write sizes at 1024.
However, this is entirely unacceptable.  As I am only getting
500k per second on reads.

I have tried building the kernel with the default eepro100 driver
in the kernel and also as a module.

I have tried the latest eepro100 (v1.13) from the scyld.com web site
as a module.

I have not tried to compile the kernel as uniprocessor.

Numerous people have reported this or similar problems.  However, I never 
found a definitive answer on what causes the problem and how to fix it.

We have no problems with our XP1000s with the build in de4x5 card
and driver.

Any suggestions?
 
Thanks,
Craig 
-- 
Craig Tierney (ctierney@hpti.com)
phone: 303-497-3112