Re: 3com issues in 2.6.5

[Wakko Warner <wakko@animx.eu.org>]

> I'm trying to track down my problems with my NIC in 2.6.5 (worked fine in
> 2.4.22). The network "works" but very very slow, and ifconfig shows almost
> the same count in the Tx packet and carrier count:
> 
> TX packets:23818 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:23817
> 
> dmesg for 2.4.22 and 2.6.5 are almost identical, except for the last lines
> in 2.4.22 (vortex_up, etc). There are no (apparently important) different in
> vortex-diag. mii-diag, however, fails to run in 2.6.5 while it works in
> 2.4.22.
> 
>  Dumps follow, in case someone can shed light.
> 
> (BTW: lsmod in 2.4.22 shows the module as busy (used twice, because I have
> two identical NICs, while in 2.6.5 it seems to be unused - I can unload the
> module with both interfaces up, but obviously as soon as I do that they
> dissapear - I assume this is the intended 2.6 behaviour).

Let me ask you, are you noticing slowness sending or receiving?  I'm having
a similar problem (2.4.25 and 2.6.4 is slow).  I had upgraded the machine
and kernel at the same time.  The nic is a 3c905b+mba nic (it netboots). 
Receiving seems fairly quick, but sending seems slow.  My definition of slow
is "not to it's full speed".  I see about 5mb/sec when I transfer files from
that machine (the disk was capable of 26mb/sec on a file, over network it
was about 5mb/sec)  I noticed the nic was sharing an IRQ (12) with the sound
card (not in use at all).

I should downgrade to 2.4.22 to see if I see a difference.  Oddly, I had
this same board in another machine (which was upgraded) using a 3c990 nic
w/o problems (kernel 2.6.x).  However, I didn't often send files at full
speed either.

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