[vortex] 3c905c arp/configuration problems

[Angus D Madden]

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I have a small (2 machine) home network.  The gateway is
running 2.4.16 with Debian Woody. Both of the NICs on the gateway=20
are 3c905C's and are up and running with no problems.

The client box also has a 3c905C. It was initially running WindowsME
with dhcp used to configure the network interface.  Everything was
working fine, network wise.

Repeated problems with the Widnows and an eventual disk failure have
prompted me to install Debian on the client box.

I could not get the network interface to function after I
installed Debian (from potato rev 2 install disks 2.2.17 kernel). =20
The 3x59x module inserts cleanly, I can bring the interface up, but I=20
can't get anywhere on the network.

I know that the cards autonegotiate cleanly because the right lights
come up on the switch (100 Mbps, Full Duplex).

When I ping from the client box to the gateway, I can see the traffic on
the switch, and I can see the echo request reach the gateway.  The
gateway then tries to send an echo-reply.  First, it tries to determine
the ethernet address of the client box - unsuccessfully.  Using tcpdump
I can see that the arp request get sent by the gateway but not received
by the client.

Likewise, when arp requests are sent from the client to the gateway, I
can see them on the gateway.  The gateway sends the is-at
reply, but this is never seen by the client.

After the pinging process, the arp caches on both machines show
(incomplete) for a HWaddress.  I have tried to manually set the
HWaddress for both machines, but that has been unsuccessful (it gets
erased whenever one of the cards talks to the network).

I have booted the client with a Widnows rescue disk in order to use the
3com dos utilities and everything looked fine.  I can follow with the
vortex debug output and vortex-diag output if necessary.

Here is a sample from the vortex debug in syslog (abbreviated):

eth0: Trying to send a packet, Tx index 3
eth0: interrupt, status e201, latency 1 ticks
eth0: In interrupt loop, status e201
eth0: exiting interrupt, status e201

ifconfig on the client machine shows plenty of Tx packets but zero Rx
packets.

I think I can rule out hardware problems because everything worked when
the client was windows.

Can anyone give me a pointer on resolving this?  I've been googling and
rtfming all day and I can't get my head around it.

Thanks.

Angus D Madden





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