Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 23:18:33 -0500 From: The Babbler <bts@babbleon.org> To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Babbleon the idiot / status (was: Bridging with 3C589D-COMBO on 4.2-RELEASE?) Message-ID: <3AB82B99.1541BC62@babbleon.org> References: <3AAC4C03.13000DE@babbleon.org> <3AAC4E83.2C281B90@babbleon.org> <20010312174852.T20830@speedy.gsinet> <3AAF06E8.103042C6@babbleon.org> <15023.44543.137285.702518@nomad.yogotech.com> <3AB036DB.3CE7E3C3@babbleon.org> <15025.897.571649.16251@nomad.yogotech.com> <3AB11C3B.7578E134@babbleon.org> <15025.7561.937102.558775@nomad.yogotech.com> <3AB12177.6DA79EF1@babbleon.org> <15025.8842.184792.656585@nomad.yogotech.com> <3AB15AE1.5F37390C@babbleon.org>
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Here's an update for those who are interested . . > TECHNICAL STUFF: > I'm in the process of upgrading my kernel to -STABLE from -RELEASE, > building in debugging, diagnostic, and ddb code, and double-checking my > IRQs. I'm having trouble getting the STABLE kernel built, which > certainly argues in favor of the thesis that I no longer have any > functioning brain cells. However, I'm bugging the poor folks on the > freebsd-stable list about that so most of you can take a break in that > regard. If I get any information from the kernel debugging I've > enabled, I'll post the information back here. Well, it took more than a couple of days, mostly becuase I decided to back up my system per the advice in the handbook, but I finally finished this up last night. (BTW, backing up took so long in part because it first involved writing a backup program, since I couldn't readily find one that did what I wanted. Does anybody know of a good program for backing up a system to a series of CD-RWs that will back it up as plain files rather than tarring it or cpioing or anything? I used scdbackup before, but it was Linux-centric and often packed the CDs inefficiently. If I'm right in thinking that there aren't too many of these puppies around I'll clean it up & release it for the world after I whip it fully into shape. Anyway, getting back to the point: The upgrade went ok. I had one glitch (easily dealt with) but it was a pretty darn cool way to manage the system upgrade process. The upgrade did part of what I had hoped for: now I *can* use my PCMCIA ethernet card with bridging enabled. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually seem to do the bridging, even though sysctl says that net.link.ether.bridge: 1 I was hoping that it would make packets just pass from the vmnet1 (vmware) address to the ep0 (real card) address without any more work on my part; before the upgrade, just enabling the kernel option broke access to ep0, and that's fixed, but I still can't get to addresses outside of my computer from my vmware virtual machine. If anybody here has any ideas, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll play with it some more and then try the eumlators group if I'm still stuck. One annoyance, though: I did crash after the kernel upgrade. (Actually, I crashed twice, but one was semi-deliberate.) Whereas previously Linux Netscape seemed to be immune to the infamous Linux Netscape Infinite Memory Bug (whereby Netscape starts consuming memory ad infinitum until the process is killed or the machine keels over from memory starvation, whichever comes first), I didn't have 4.3-BETA up for 45 minutes before I crashed this way. I recognized what was happening, but thanks to FreeBSD's much faster memory allocation, I was unable to get the process killed before the machine locked up. The other crash was where I deliberately tested to see if the "soft-boot bug" was fixed, It's not. Should I make a formal problem report about that one? (It's the bug whereby FreeBSD fails to shutdown something on my 3com 3c589d card--if I soft-boot from FreeBSD [even if I'm not softbooted *into* FreeBSD], the machine freezes when it tries to startup the card.) > IRQ: > Guess what! Sure enough, it looks like I have two IRQ conflicts after > all. I really *thought* I'd checked this long ago, but I guess I > checked these on my other computer and not on this one . . . and one of > the conflicts is with the PCMCIA card, sho' nuff. I could swear that > I'd checked this long ago, but I now suspect that I'd checked it only on > my *other* computer. In practice, I hadn't had any trouble with the > 3com card on this computer. The crashes I've had on this computer have > involved changes to the bridges and firewall code. Changes which I > never even thought to connect with the PCMCIA itself until this thread > started. > > They are with devices I never use, but perhaps they generate interrupts > sometimes anyway. > > IRQ 3: Used by sio1 and the ep0 PCMCIA card. This one might explain a > lot. > IRQ 5: Used by the USB controller and the sound card. > > I don't ever use USB devices, and I don't even have usb support built > into the kernel. Is this a potential problem anyway, or is it harmless? > > As for IRQ 3, I've now set up pccard.conf to use IRQ 9 (which is unused) > and we'll see what that does for the state of my system. I've had this going for a week now and I've seen no crashes apparently related to ethernet. That doesn't mean all that much since they weren't *that* frequent to start with, but it's a good sign. BTW, just for grins I tried building a bridged kernel with 4.2-RELEASE after fixing the IRQ problem, and the failure I had (a bridged kernel disables ep) was *not* fixed by IRQ. So it definately was the kernel upgrade that fixed that problem, not fixing the IRQ conflict. -- "Brian, the man from babble-on" bts@babbleon.org Brian T. Schellenberger http://www.babbleon.org Support http://www.eff.org. Support decss defendents. Support http://www.programming-freedom.org. Boycott amazon.com. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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