[realtek] Computers Reboots...

[Donald Becker]

On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Peter Szmrecsanyi wrote:

> Yesterday my Linux box crashed and rebooted for what seemed to be no reason.
> I've been subscriber of this mailing list now for over a year now and I
> distinctfully remember seeing messages that mentioned Linux machines using
> RTL8139 NICs rebooting under heavy network load (using driver version 1.11
> if my memory servers me right) fro apparently no reason.

The v1.11 driver had a specific bug to cause this.

Driver versions before 1.11 included the CRC in the packet byte count.
While correcting the byte count, I introduced a think-o for the rare
case where a packets that spanned the ring wrap in the last few bytes.  I
subtracted 4 _after_ checking for the warp, and occasionally did a
memcpy(..., -4).  This turned into memcpy(...., really-big-number),
which effectively corrupted all memory.  Doh!

This bug was the comforting kind: once found it was easily verified as
causing the problem, and that the fix was correct.

Your problem is likely bad memory, not the driver.


Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993