[realtek] networking problems....

David Pitts dsp6855@mail.qx.net
Tue, 29 Aug 2000 00:51:13 -0400


Short Version:
Bought 3 systems, all alike.  1 worked fine, 2 did not.  Initial problem was
IRQ being set to 0 (ie. not set at all).  Now that the IRQ is being set, I
the system locks up and/or reboots during communication (something more than
a regular ping, but ping -f does it EVERY time).

The good news is that when I switched the ethernet cards between one where I
had problems and one where I did not, I am not at least getting some kind of
output.   That output is in the log below.

Synopsis of log:

Networking up
ping works
ping -f locks up system
move original driver (instead of newer driver from Donald Becker's ftp site)
back into place
networking will not work at all.
move D. Becker's newer driver into place.
networking will work, but stress on the card causes reboot.
switched network cards between "bad" machine and "good" machine
"good" machine works with "bad" card.
"bad" machine has same problems with "good" card as with "bad" card.
Difference is that now there is some output.
That output was typed in and is below.
set BIOS settings on "bad" machine to be identical to that on "good"
machine.
Same problems - lock up/reboot when ethernet stressed.

Any help on this would be GREATLY appreciated!!


Here is a log of what I did and some information/thoughts that I collected
along the way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
Red Hat 6.2   (2.2.14-5.0)

normal ping shows no problems...
ping -f zeus caused system to lock up (even caps lock would not come on)

ping from zeus showed no problems
ping -f from zeus caused system to reboot.

#Sounds like an interrupt problem....

I am using the driver I downloaded from the internet.  I am going to put the
original driver back and see if it does any better.

tried ftp'ing a small file - 20K - and it reboot as well.... but, did it
copy??

17k file worked....
17239 bytes received in 0.022 seconds (7.8e+02 Kbytes/s)


I replaced the downloaded driver with the original and restarted and
networking would not come up
at all.  I put the downloaded driver back in place, rebooted, and am now
back where we were before.

eth0 is set to irq5:

0 timer1
1 keyboard
2 cascade
5 eth0
8 rtc
10 es1371
12 PS/2 Mouse
14 ide0


14 fpu



switched network cards with one known to work (still using newer driver -
although other machine has
older driver), and got the following result with a ping -f:
============================================================
PING Zeus.zeus.com (192.168.1.1) from 192.168.1.181 : 56(84) bytes of data.
.Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 3ffa1657
current->txx.cr3 = 00101000
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0002
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<d005e62c>]
EFLAGS:  00010213
eax:  ffffff64 ebx: cf8bd560 ecx: 3ffa1657 edx: 00000062
esi:  ce94a6a0 edi:  ce95fdd6 ebp: c0233ec0 esp: c0233e84
ds:  0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process swapper (pid: 0, process nr: 0, stackpage-c0233000)
Stack:  00000005 00000064 fffffffe 00000800 b501a8c0 10371038 ce7e5736
ce7e56d2
        00000062 00000066 00007f98 cda7ff98 cd7d0000 00001000 ce7e5000
c0233f0c
        d005dfb6 cffdcec0 ce8ea520 04000001 00000005 cee96080 00000054
00000000
Call Trace: [<d005dfb6>] [<c010b147>] [<c010af1d>] [<c010b25c>] [<c010af5c>]
[<c01083cc>] [<c0108424>]
        [<c0106000>] [<c0108462>] [<c010a0d4>] [<c0106000>] [<c0106076>]
[<c0100175>]
Code: 28 29 2a 2b 2c 2d 2e 2f 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 84 89 69 89
Aiee, killing interrupt handler
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill the idle task!
In swapper task - not syncing

============================================================

system locked up....   caps lock doesn't work
rebooting and switchig to older driver that is in use on other machine....

Older driver does not work at all.  Basically, I am having same problems as
with other card.
#It must be some sort of interrupt on the card or something....


Every bios setting is exactly the same as the working machine, and still
have the same problem.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------




Thanks,

David
David Pitts
President, Pitts Technical Resources, Inc
(859) 971-2255
www.dpitts.com
dpitts@mk.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald Becker" <becker@scyld.com>
To: "David Pitts" <dsp6855@mail.qx.net>
Cc: <realtek@scyld.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2000 9:56 AM
Subject: Re: [realtek] networking problems....


> On Sat, 26 Aug 2000, David Pitts wrote:
>
> > I bought 3 HP Pavilion PC's model 8772C. They came with 100Base-T LAN
> > Adapters. The first one configured and is up and running no problem. The
> > other two have the same problem. The network cards will not
configure/run
> > properly. If I try to install RedHat 6.2 and configure networking at the
> > time of install, it install dies right after loading all the software.
If
>
> What do you mean "dies".  Does the machine
>    stop installing with the OS still running (e.g. CapsLock LED toggling),
>    completely freeze
>    produce a kernel crash message.
>
> > would not work. The card is recognized as SMC 1211TX and loaded the
driver
> > rtl8139. I went out to RedHat and searched for this card. Found that
there
>
> Normal.
>
> > are a couple models and some of them work and some do not. I downloaded
> > the new drivers/patches for this card loaded it. It still did not work.
I
> > went down to the computer store and purchased 2 3Com cards - model
> > no. 3CSOHO100-TX. which uses the 3c59x driver. I configured the
networking
> > with this card, and had the same problem. I downloaded the newest
drivers
> > from the web and installed them, and it still did not work...... ARGH!
>
> This doesn't sound like a driver problem, but rather a machine
configuration
> problem.  We will need more info to track it down.  What was the card
> detection message?
>
> If you can, run the rtl8139-diag program from:
>   http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
>
> > HP 10/100Base-T LAN Adapter (Ethernet)
> > which Linux recognized as an SMC 1211TX and loaded the driver rtl8139
>
> It's a RealTek chip, with Accton's PCI ID.  Accton bought the SMC brand
> name.  The old SMC is now "SMSC".
>
> > So, I went and bought a 3Com model 3CSOHO100-TX card and replaced the
> > other card with this one. I wen to Red Hat site and searched for this
> > card, which uses the 3c59x driver.
>
> I'm guessing that you either don't have the card in a bus-master slot, or
> it's assigned an invalid IRQ (0 or 255) by the BIOS.
> Read
>    http://www.scyld.com/expert/irq-conflict.html
>
> Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
> Scyld Computing Corporation http://www.scyld.com
> 410 Severn Ave. Suite 210 Beowulf-II Cluster Distribution
> Annapolis MD 21403
>
>
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