[realtek] re: yellow light

[Piotr Trojanek]

>On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Piotr Trojanek wrote:
>
>> it happens once per month, but sometimes once per day, that yellow LED
>> indicating LINK-ON turns off. when ping'ing the machine I don't get any
>> responses.
>What driver version are you using?
>What does 'rtl8139-diag' report when the link fails?
>

uhh, it would be nice, if I could connect with keyboard or console into
locked in rack-case embedded PC, and had running shell on it (I've
disable any access other than SETUP for security reasons)...:)

and there's no way to ie. auto email diags to me, since network
connection is down!

the problem is worst, because I can't make it happend in lab -- posibbly
it has occured just once, at the begging, but I silently igored it by
pluging out/in RJ-45.

>> first, I thought that this can be matter of kernel driver, so I changed
>> it from 8139too.c (linux-2.4.18) to old one (linux-2.2.19). It seemed
>> that this was the case, but problem started to wake again.
>Please report the driver version, not the kernel version.
>

2.2.19 (rtl8139.c): v1.07
2.4.18 (8139too.c): 0.9.25

maybe more important is, thats RTL8139B (I know, that B/C has only
voltage difference, but...)

>> monitoriong my few embedded linux routers shows that it's not case of one
>> buggy motherboard -- LED turns of in near every one, but with totaly
>> unpredictable frequency, so it's hardly impossible to trace this.
>>
>> there is one RTL chip which supports 3 LAN.
>> device is: http://www.advantech.com/products/WEB-2143.asp
>> but they seems to ignore my questions:(
>That's just an embedded PC.  Although a '486 CPU attached to a modern
>PCI chip is sure to cause serious data transfer problems.

yeah, I don't even like it looks!:)
we will change this board in few weeks, but unfortunately into ones with
RTL8139:(

IMHO it's kind a hardware problem, maybe board<->RTLchip, or who knows.

As I was studing RTL spec's pdf, driver code, I can't see any way to
manipulate "yellow LED" in software way -- it's seems bo impossible even
on chip interface. I've written, that RJ-45 plug out/in is 100% trick.

I guess, that if there is ANY software way to emulate chip's behavior,
in similar way, as it does when I phisically plug RJ-45 into it, I would
make it happend every ie. 60 seconds.

I've heard, that guys who download's Gb movies by RTL8139 has kind of
similar chip's hang-up, but they probaly uses it with Win* machines and
with poor-quality cables, so there is no point to ask them.

Two weeks ago I got report, that "ping" doesn't reply -- I'm pretty
sure, that was a "yellow LED" problem. Embdedded PC was connected to
Cisco switch, closed in air-conditioned room inside huge rack, with
profesional cabling, etc.

so what can I do?

thanks in advance for any help...

-- 
Piotr Trojanek