[realtek] re: yellow light

[Donald Becker]

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, Piotr Trojanek wrote:
> >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?
...
> and there's no way to ie. auto email diags to me, since network
> connection is down!
..
> >> 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

OK, the current version of rtl8139.c is v1.20a.
The v1.07 driver was released in July 1999.

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

There are several other differences.

> 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.

This might be a "twister tuning" problem, caused by echos on the cable.

> 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 suggest you try an updated driver first.

mkdir /tmp/netdrivers/
cd /tmp/netdrivers/
ncftp ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/netdrivers.tgz
tar xfvz netdrivers.tgz
make
make install

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993