[vortex] Problems with 3c59x

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Donald Becker wrote:

> > Dec 12 17:29:24 lapd eth0: Media selection timer tick happened, Autonegotiate full duplex.
> > Dec 12 17:29:28 lapd eth1: Media selection timer tick happened, Autonegotiate full duplex.

Why this short time between timer ticks ? The unabridged logs show even 
more of this to what seem to me like random intervals. Is the machine too 
busy and can't keep up with logging and thus the timestamps are misleading?

> What were the messages before this one?  Something about "interrupt
> blocked"?

This is later in the logs:

Dec 12 17:37:04 lapd eth1: IRQ 11 is physically blocked! Failing back to 
low-rate polling.

and I belive that it doesn't just happen then because of 
down/rmmod/insmod/up.

> Ahhh, buglet.  This can never happen in normal use, but it can when the
> Tx queue was full before being shut down.

Andrew fixed this in the kernel driver about a year or so ago :-)
I think that it was even mentioned on this list, but I might be wrong...

> Bogdan, do you know where there is a listing of which APIC bugs were
> fixed when?

I don't know of such a list to exist; the fixes seem to come from 
different persons (from the Changelogs) so I don't think that such a list 
could exist...

> I guess I can't suggest trying a newer kernel ;->.

No, but maybe an older one or a vendor supplied one. This will show if the 
breakage is recent :-)

And from Cosmin's message:

> My machine is:
> M/B Tyan TIGER 200
> 2 CPUs x 1GHz Intel PIII

I was just about to ask about the machine, because it was never mentioned 
if it's a SMP one (which I believed to be after seeing the "Tx ring full" 
messages) or UP with/without APIC. Does it have the lastest BIOS version ? 
This sometimes helped to aleviate interrupt related problems - generally 
speaking, nothing specific to this board. If the BIOS has the option of 
MPS level, could you try changing from 1.4 to 1.1 or vice-versa ?

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De