Re: Linux 2.6.9 Adaptec 4 Port Starfire Sickness

From: Willy Tarreau
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 00:49:07 EST


Hi Jeff,

I've also experienced those messages under 2.4, but they were harmless,
and I never had a machine hang even after weeks of full load (the adapter
was mounted on a stress test machine before being used in firewalls for
months).

So I wonder how you can be sure that it is this driver which finally locks
the bus. Perhaps the system locks for any other reason (eg: race condition).
Have you tried with any other 4-port NIC (tulip or sun for example) ? Sun
QFE would be the most interesting to test as it also supports 64 bits /
66 MHz.

Regards,
Willy

On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 09:41:28PM -0700, jmerkey wrote:
> With linux 2.6.9 running at 192 MB/S network loading and protocol
> splitting drivers routing packets out of
> a 2.6.9 device at full 100 mb/s (12.5 MB/S) simultaneously over 4 ports,
> the adaptec starfire driver goes into
> constant Tx FIFO reconfiguration mode and after 3-4 days of constantly
> resetting the Tx FIFO window and
> generating a deluge of messages such as:
>
> ethX: PCI bus congestion, resetting Tx FIFO window to X bytes
>
> pouring into the system log file at a rate of a dozen per minute. After
> several days, the PCI bus totally locks up
> and hangs the system. Need a config option to allow the starfire to
> disable this feature. At very
> high bus loading rates, the starfire card will completely lock the bus
> after 3-4 days
> of constant Tx FIFO reconfiguration at very high data rates with
> protocol splitting and routing.
>
> Jeff
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