[vortex] Re: 3c905 errors:

[Steven Timm]

In an earlier post I had reported errors on a Tyan 2466
motherboard, 3c905C-tx on-board interface.
Donald Becker's response was that I should run the new (9/6/03)
version of mii-diag --monitor.

Attached below is the output from one of my most persnickety nodes.
This covers about two hours of running.  The machine is running
a normal cpu load plus the "nettest" program which is
sending and receiving packets to another node as fast as it can,
continuously.

Over the course of this test, which is still ongoing, this
test generated 33 receive errors in the "err" column of /proc/net/dev,
14 FIFO receive errors, and 29 "frame errors.

We did not see any of the messages

Oct  3 21:32:37 fnd0196 kernel: eth0: Setting half-duplex based on MII #24
link partner capability of 0000.
Oct  3 21:33:37 fnd0196 kernel: eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII #24
link partner capability of 41e1.
during this time.  Up to this point I haven't been able to observe
one of these errors as it happens, but over the course of this
week there has been an average of two or three of them per node
in a 240-node cluster.

On the remote node I was sending the packets to, there was
an error:

eth0: Updating statistics failed, disabling stats as an interrupt source.
but no increase in the error counters.

The down and up messages in the log below follow each
other in very rapid succession. The link light appears to blink
out but it is very hard to tell.

Any advice on what might be happening?

Thanks,

Steve Timm


[root@fnd0196 bin]# mii-diag --monitor
Using the default interface 'eth0'.
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x7821 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0f00 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x0f05 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x0061 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x6305 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x7821 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x6305 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7104 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x0061 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x0061 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x4f05 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0300 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0300 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0f00 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x7c10 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x7828 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x4f05 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
down         0x0000 0x41e1
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
up           0x7805 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1
negotiating  0x7821 0x0000
up           0x782d 0x41e1


------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven C. Timm (630) 840-8525  timm@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