[eepro100] mdio_read() timed out

[Kevin Hansard]

Hi,

My machine is a Dell PowerEdge 2600 with two Intel Pentium/4 Xeon 1.8GHz processors, though they appear as four due to Hyperthreading.

Relevant part of lspci output is:
02:02.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
03:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
03:05.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
06:04.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
07:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
07:05.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
08:03.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
09:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
09:05.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)

I have one of the cards out of the machine anyway, so the card has two SB82558B chips and the 21552AB PCI bridge.

I have modified the code as suggested and here is a sample of the output:
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 25 ticks.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 1 ticks.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz last message repeated 4 times
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() timed out with val = 08210000.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 6401 ticks.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 1 ticks.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 1 ticks.
Dec  5 08:44:16 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 25 ticks.

As you can see the timeout still occurs. Just to make sure I also tried the driver with boguscnt = 64*1000 and got:

Dec  5 09:45:08 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() timed out with val = 08210000.
Dec  5 09:45:08 buzz kernel:  mdio_read() took 64001 ticks.

Could the problem be a faulty network card? I have already had one faulty card - in that case the card wouldn't communicate and reported this error:
kernel: eth2: Transmit timed out: status 0090  0c00 at 63/126 command 0001a000.

I swapped the card and the problem was fixed. I hasten to add that this is a brand new machine with new cards all supplied by DELL.

Is there anyway I can determine if the mdio_read time outs are associated with a particular card or interface (without shutting down interfaces, this is a live machine).

Thanks for the help.

Kevin