Re: Strange errors from e1000 driver (2.6.18)

["Jesse Brandeburg" <jesse.brandeburg@gmail.com>]

On 10/22/06, Martin J. Bligh <mbligh@google.com> wrote:
> Jesse Brandeburg wrote:
> > Analysis follows, but I wanted to ask you to bisect back if you can to
> > find the apparent patch to make the difference.  Basically at this
> > point I'd say its not likely to be an e1000 issue, but I'd like to
> > follow up and make sure.
>
> That's going to be ugly, since I can't reproduce it at will. Maybe if
> I netperf it to the other box I can push it over.

try tbench with 100 sessions (from dbench package) and see if that hurts.

> > Nothing seems out of order, but the latency may be low, I'd be curious
> > what these looked like before with the old kernel.  Some of the other
> > things to compare would have been the lspci -vv output from your
> > chipset with old/new kernel, in case the bridge/system configuration
> > changed.  There are no known problems right now with this chipset
> > 82546EB
>
> OK. will try later when I have more time. For now I switched to the
> onboard via rhine controller.

ouch.

> > shared int, fine, but whats with the ERR: ?
>
> Hmm. Having rebooted they look rather lower. but might be a time thing.
>
>             CPU0
>    0:    1405995          XT-PIC  timer
>    1:       5910          XT-PIC  i8042
>    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
>    5:          0          XT-PIC  uhci_hcd:usb3
>    7:      27135          XT-PIC  ehci_hcd:usb2, VIA8237, eth0
>   10:          0          XT-PIC  uhci_hcd:usb4, uhci_hcd:usb5,
> uhci_hcd:usb6
>   11:          0          XT-PIC  ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb7,
> uhci_hcd:usb8
>   12:     157547          XT-PIC  i8042
>   14:      36296          XT-PIC  ide0
>   15:     196690          XT-PIC  ide1
> NMI:          0
> LOC:    1406006
> ERR:         26
>
> > except you didn't include any of the e1000 load information nor the
> > system's boot information as it came up.
>
> OK, it had gone since reboot, but I rebooted just now .... new info
> attached.
>
> > This chipset is one of the most frequent common elements in problem
> > reports of TX hangs for e1000.  My current theory (we've bought a
> > bunch of these systems and never reproduced the issue) is that there
> > is something either design specific or BIOS specific that causes this
> > chipset to interact very badly with e1000 hardware.  Some systems have
> > the issue and some don't.  If you could bisect back to a working point
> > it would be interesting to see where that pointed.
>
> OK, is going to be hard to bisect, since the other one was an Ubuntu
> kernel, but I guess I can give 2.6.15 virgin a shot, at least.

thanks, I know how difficult and time consuming bisecting is.

> > doesn't seem you're overclocked.  Good.
>
> Nah, I'm pretty conservative with hardware, get enough problems when
> it's all running within specs ;-)
>
> Thanks for looking at all this.

welcome, like to help when I can.

> Linux version 2.6.18 (mbligh@titus) (gcc version 3.4.6 (Ubuntu 3.4.6-1ubuntu2)) #2 Sun > e1000: eth0: e1000_clean_tx_irq: Detected Tx Unit Hang
>   Tx Queue             <0>
>   TDH                  <26>
>   TDT                  <26>
>   next_to_use          <26>
>   next_to_clean        <39>
> buffer_info[next_to_clean]
>   time_stamp           <77145>
>   next_to_watch        <3b>
>   jiffies              <7734f>
>   next_to_watch.status <0>
> NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
> e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog: NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex

hey, this one is different.  It is actually the common tx hang
signature (TDH == TDT) for these kinds of systems. I've come up with a
workaround driver, code is still in development.

you can try it if you would like.
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php?group_id=42302&atid=447449&file_id=198849&aid=1463045

Thanks,
  Jesse