> I tried to use 3c905 network card in an alpha machine and got
> an infinite oops loop. It seems that this happens because of
> the driver of the network card, since if I remove the card or
> insert another one (PCnet32 - its driver is compiled in kernel too)
> the oops does not happen.
...
> kernel 2.1.85, the driver in the kernel (v0.47H) and separately downloaded
> (v0.49) behave similarly.
This is the misaligned-lock issue on the Alpha.
The testing version of the driver avoids this issue by having its own
word-aligned lock:
ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/test/3c59x.c
Another solution is to change the <asm/bitops.h> to work with
non-word-aligned locks.
Donald Becker becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. 20771
301-286-0882 http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/people/becker/whoiam.html