Re: [9fans] rtl8139 ether driver

[okamoto@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp]

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Thank you very much, Jim.

It may hard to read the error message even if I make it run in debugging
mode, because it occures very rarely, and when it happenes, that machine
reboots automatically, and then, that neccessary mesage could be hidden
among lots of others...

When I experienced system crush of our CPU server, I tried to find some
other dual Pentium machine for it.   I failed to do it, because there may be
no Pen III dual motherboard in the market, except only of SuperMicro's
Xeon motherbord, which is very very expensive, and beyond my scope
of fund.  (I was told some $1,200~1,300 for that motherboard!!)  So, I had
to choose Pen 4 mother for that server.   This may also be true for most
of Plan 9 users now.  How we can enjoy multi-CPU nature of Plan 9. Alas!

Kenji


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From: jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] rtl8139 ether driver
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 21:58:34 -0400
Message-ID: <7b2da9c3f29b1a4d0c352b4167dd4757@plan9.bell-labs.com>

On Tue Jun 25 21:48:22 EDT 2002, okamoto@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp wrote:
>
> I'm now forced to use rtl8139 nic for my new Auth/CPU server (
> it's for 3ed not 4ed. I cannot update our system now, because it's
> being used for the platform for our application, and the semester is
> still going here).   it reboots once a day.  :-)
>
> We had been using dual Pen III on SuperMicro motherboard, but it
> crushed about a month ago.   Then, I changed that server to a Pen 4
> mother board (1.6GHz) of AOpen AX4B Pro-533 which has on board
> nic chip of Realtek 8100BL.   It seems to work fine, however, it may
> have problem as above.
>
> When I read the /sys/src/9/pc/ether8139.c, I found the lines of
> "Error recovery for the various over/under-flow conditions may need work"
> phrase.   Does my problem relate to this remark?
>
> Kenji

I only have an 8139C and I've not ever seen an error of any kind on it,
hence my comment about work may be required if any error conditions happen.
Someone else asked me a similar question some months ago, and I suggested
putting in debugging prints in the driver wherever an error is detected.
That way you will see something if the card causes any problem and then
reboots the machine.

There may also be problems with the P4 processor, we don't have any here
to run on.

--jim