[realtek] total hangs with 2.4.4, knfsd and realtek 8139too driver

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Hello,

I'm posting this to both nfs and realtek lists, cause I am not certain
where to look for the culprit.

Server Config:

PIII 800 MHz, 256MB RAM, eepro 100, RealTek 8139, 40G maxtor disk
Linux 2.4.4 kernel with ksnfd-reiser patch, quota patch
based on slackware-current late april

partitions:
/  - ext2
/usr/src - reiserfs
/mpeg - reriserfs (contains about 20G of MP3 data)

/mpeg is exported to the department both through samba 2.2.0 and knfsd
/usr/src is exported by knfsd

/etc/exports contents:
/mpeg   10.2.26.1/24(rw,sync)
/usr/src  10.2.26.1/24(rw,sync) 10.0.1.0/24(rw,sync)

eepro 100 has 10.2.26.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
realtek 8139 has 10.0.1.253 netmask 255.255.248.0
default route: 10.2.26.254, which connects to the company intranet, with
130.145 IP adresses.

The machine is also the DHCP server for the 10.2.26 test network and
routes to the measuring network at 10.0.x.y

Today I had several total freezes. Total in: no reaction anymore on
network or screen. No visible crash though. Machine did not recover
after letting it be for several minutes.

All freezes occured using the Realtek, which is why i suspect the
8139too driver.

situation 1:

using ncftp from a to be installed client copy the 2.4.4 kernel from the
server to the client.
I've tried this 3 times, all attempts resulted in a system freeze.

situation 2:
I added /usr/src to /etc/exports in order to use nfs.
mounted /usr/src from the client to be installed, "cd /usr/src/linux"
and then "make modules_install"
At the end of "make modules_install" I got a system freeze again.
Also reproducible.

In between the two machines is a blackbox hub that gives an indication
of network load. In both cases it reported a network load of over 50%.

I am not happy with this. Its a production machine that besides serving
MP3 to our department, is also the DHCP server and a router to my
measuring network. Considering the load on it, it should handle this
without problems.

We are still adding MP3' s to it, and copying >600Mb over the eepro100
gave no problems. This was using samba though.

I've found no messages in /var/log/messages, debug or syslog.

Has anybody a suggestion of what this can be? Or where to look, and how
to look?

All ideas welcome,


Rudy Zijlstra