[tulip-bug] transmit timed out + too much work during an interrupt problems

[Donald Becker]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Gehrken Klaus wrote:

> Under not yet discovered circumstances, some of our firewallinterfaces stop
> working,
> no packets are transmittet or recieved any more until "ifdown ethx ; ifup
> ethx".

What does tulip-diag -af report when the card is hung?
Are there any receive errors reported in /proc/net/dev?

> In dmesg we see lots of: Too much work during an interrupt and Restarted Rx
> at xxx /yyy messages!

You can increase the max_interrupt_work parameter, but this likely the
driver protecting the system from interrupt thrashing.  During the
no-interrupt periods the NIC runs short of receive buffers.
  What kind of workload do you have?
  How important is handling network traffic vs. doing other work?

-- 
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