[vortex] 3c59x not responding after some idle time

[Andrew Morton]

Kai Duebbert wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have a problem with my 3com card. It all works well until the card
> didn't send any packets for some hours. It is not possible to reach
> it from the outside. When I send something (e.g. do a ping from the
> machine), everything is fine again. No error messages anywhere.

This sounds like the old `sleepy NIC' problem, which was
caused by some Cicso gear at the other end of the link.
The problem was that after a while the switch simply
assumed that the host had disappeared.   But you're
using BNC/AUI, which probably rules this out.

Could you please describe your physical network?

Are you able to reproduce the problem using 10baseT or 100baseT?

> I have tried several different setups, (no) routers, options,
> half-duplex/full-duplex, etc. Nothing solved the problem. When
> compiling the driver into the kernel, it doesn't find the
> right interface (using "ether=0,0,1,eth0").
>

`ether=' got itself broken in 2.4.3ish.  Sigh.  I'm still working
on getting it mended again.

> I read all documentation I could find including the archives of the
> linux-vortex mailing list. It has the feeling as if the card goes into
> power management or something like that. But all power management
> etc. (also in BIOS) is disabled.
> 
> I hope somebody can help me. (I still have to do the debug=7, but maybe
> somebody knows something already.) At the moment I am keeping the connection
> alive by pinging my gateway every 10 seconds, but I would obviously prefer having
> the problem solved.
> 
> Regards,
> Kai
> 
> Here some more information:

Was this information gathered while the machine was in its
unresponsive mode?  If not, could you please gather this info
when the NIC is misbehaving?

Thanks.