Re: [E1000-devel] [TCP]: TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT causes leak sockets

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed Jun 18 2008 - 17:33:38 EST



* Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> * Kok, Auke <auke-jan.h.kok@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > Any ideas about what i should try next?
> >
> > have you tried e1000e?
>
> will try it.

ok, i tried it now, and there's good news: the latency problem seems
largely fixed by e1000e. (yay!)

with e1000 i got these anomalous latencies:

64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=1000 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=0.882 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=1007 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=0.522 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=1003 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=0.381 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=1010 ms

with e1000e i get:

64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.212 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.372 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.815 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.961 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.201 ms
64 bytes from europe (10.0.1.15): icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.788 ms

TCP latencies are fine too - ssh feels snappy again.

it still does not have nearly as good latencies as say forcedeth though:

64 bytes from mercury (10.0.1.13): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.076 ms
64 bytes from mercury (10.0.1.13): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.085 ms
64 bytes from mercury (10.0.1.13): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.045 ms
64 bytes from mercury (10.0.1.13): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.053 ms

that's 10 times better packet latencies.

and even an ancient Realtek RTL-8139 over 10 megabit Ethernet (!) has
better latencies than the e1000e over 1000 megabit:

64 bytes from pluto (10.0.1.10): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.309 ms
64 bytes from pluto (10.0.1.10): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.333 ms
64 bytes from pluto (10.0.1.10): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.329 ms
64 bytes from pluto (10.0.1.10): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.311 ms
64 bytes from pluto (10.0.1.10): icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.302 ms

is it done intentionally perhaps? I dont think it makes much sense to
delay rx/tx processing on a completely idle box for such a long time.

The options i used are:

CONFIG_E1000=y
CONFIG_E1000_NAPI=y
# CONFIG_E1000_DISABLE_PACKET_SPLIT is not set
CONFIG_E1000E=y
CONFIG_E1000E_ENABLED=y

> But even it if solves the problem it's a nasty complication: given how
> many times i have to bisect back into the times when there was only
> e1000 around, how do i handle the transition? I have automated
> bisection tools, etc. and i bisect very frequently.

one possibility would be to change 'make oldconfig' to keep old options
around - as long as they look "unknown" to a particular kernel. It would
list them in some special "unknown options" section near the end of the
.config or so. That way the E1000E=y setting could survive a bisection
run which dives down into older kernel versions. (obviously old kernels
wont grow this capability magically, so if we do such a change we'll
have to wait years for it all to trickle through.)

and eventually E1000E could become the default.

Ingo
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/