3c59x driver, "eth0: Too much work in interrupt, status e401"

[Steven Timm]

We have a cluster of machines running Redhat 7.1 with errata
kernel 2.4.9-31smp.  These are Tyan 2466 boards which have
one on-board 3com network controller.

dmesg output is:

3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
02:08.0: 3Com PCI 3c905C Tornado at 0x3000. Vers LK1.1.16

WE have also seen the same error on Tyan 2468 nodes running Redhat 7.3
with 2.4.18-18smp kernel, the latest errata kernel available from Redhat.

dmesg from these are:

3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
02:08.0: 3Com PCI 3c982 Dual Port Server Cyclone at 0x2400. Vers
LK1.1.18-ac
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
02:09.0: 3Com PCI 3c982 Dual Port Server Cyclone at 0x2480. Vers
LK1.1.18-ac
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth1
eth0: Setting half-duplex based on MII #24 link partner capability of
0000.
eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII #24 link partner capability of
41e1.

-------------------------------------------------

I have two questions:

1) Is the message "too much work in interrupt, status E401"
dangerous.. I seem to remember getting it in 6.1 all the time
and things still seem to work.  But every once in a while
we are seeing a system hang within an hour of the time one of
these errors happen on the console

2) Is the version string as given in the dmesg the correct
way to determine the version number of the 3com driver we are running?
Are any newer versions available, and will they help this problem?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Steve Timm



------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven C. Timm (630) 840-8525  timm at fnal.gov  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
Fermilab Computing Division/Core Support Services Dept.
Assistant Group Leader, Scientific Computing Support Group
Lead of Computing Farms Team