Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 29 May 2008 18:52:55 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>
To:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de
Subject:   Re: broken re(4)
Message-ID:  <200805291652.m4TGqt2o060679@lurza.secnetix.de>
In-Reply-To: <20080529171351.a3dd5111.gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Gerrit Kühn wrote:
 > Meanwhile I have set up two more machines. Now I have 5 ITX systems,
 > each with 2 re-NICs, and only one is behaving strange.

In that case I would suspect that the one piece of hardware
that is misbehaving is broken and needs to be replaced.

 > The only hardware thing that is different in this system from the
 > others is an additional SATA-controller. Can there be conflicts with
 > this card which are triggering the problems?

I think it's unlikely.  Do they share interrupts?  (The
output of "vmstat -i" will tell you.)

In theory it could also be a power supply problem.  I
assume that you use rather small (thus possibly weak)
power supplies for your ITX machines.  Maybe the SATA
controller in that problematic machine drives the power
supply to its limit, and the re(4) interfaces suffer.
You could check whether removing the SATA controller
improves things.  Or try to connect a stronger power
supply if you have one available.

Other than that, typical things to do to diagnose such
problems:

 - Do you see any non-zero numbers in the collision or
   error columns of "netstat -i"?

 - Are you sure the interfaces don't have the same MAC
   addresses (it's unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to check
   in the ifconfig output).

 - Are you sure that media and duplex settings are
   correct on both sides (i.e. PC and switch)?

 - Have you tried replacing cables, switch ports, or the
   whole switch?

 - Have you tried to disable hardware support features
   of the driver?  In 7-stable re(4) supports quite a lot
   of hardware features.  See "ifconfig -m".  You could
   check whether disabling RXCSUM, TXCSUM and/or TSO4
   makes a difference.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606,  Geschäftsfuehrung:
secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün-
chen, HRB 125758,  Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart

FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr:  http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

"[...]  one observation we can make here is that Python makes
an excellent pseudocoding language, with the wonderful attribute
that it can actually be executed."  --  Bruce Eckel



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200805291652.m4TGqt2o060679>