Hi all,
for about a year and a half i have problems with network cards 3Com PCI
3c905C Tornado
here is the description of the problem:
I have the following hardware:
MB EliteGroup P6ISAII with chipset Intel815
LAN CARD 3Com PCI 3c905C Tornado
CPU Intel PIII 733 and 933
Sound Embeded
Video Intel815 Embeded
Log entries while loading driver 3c90x are:
Dec 19 16:03:35 oboroten kernel: 3c59x: Donald Becker and others.
http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
Dec 19 16:03:35 oboroten kernel: 01:03.0: at 0xc000. Vers LK1.1.18-ac
The tower is ATX. when i shut down the computer from the button and after
start it the led which shows that nic is connected to 100Mb mode (I have
leds for 10Mb, 100Mb,ACT) start blinking each second the same do and the led
on the switch (the switch is 3COM office connect DualSpeedSwitch 16).
and when linux boots i have no network at all. I have attached logs for
notworking and working situation.
In order to fix the problem i must unplug the power cord(there is no other
way to copletely stop powering the computer) wait a few seconds plug it
again and start the computer from the button and check to see if the led is
blinking if yes reapeat this action as much times as is necessary for the
led to stop blinking. The interesting part is that if the NIC is blinking
and i load windows the things are working just fine i think that windows
driver has some initialisation (the led stops blinking) which the linux
driver does not have but these are just suppositions.
Notice that i have some lines in the messages log "working situation" which
looks like this:
Dec 30 12:52:01 oboroten kernel: eth0: vortex_error(), status=0xe081
this appears when i execute the following command:
ping -f some.host
i have running 4 machines with the same HW configuration and the problem is
reproducable on all of them. I have noticed this problem since kernel 2.4.2
and it is here by now.
on the machine that i use for testing these things i have kernel:
Linux xxxx.xxxxx.xxxxx 2.4.18-19.8.0 #1 Thu Dec 12 05:39:29 EST 2002 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux
but I have and machines with 2.4.19 which has the same problem.
I have this problem often when we have power failure and my boss is not very
happy the servers to be down when i am not in the office after power
failure.
I have executed and the diagnostic programs mii-diag and vortex-diag their
logs are attached to the mail too.
Best Regards,
Deian Chepishev
On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Deian Chepishev wrote:
> for about a year and a half i have problems with network cards 3Com PCI
> 3c905C Tornado
...
> Log entries while loading driver 3c90x are:
>
> Dec 19 16:03:35 oboroten kernel: 3c59x: Donald Becker and others.
> http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
> Dec 19 16:03:35 oboroten kernel: 01:03.0: at 0xc000. Vers LK1.1.18-ac
Are there other messages? Something has apparently removed the
important log message of that identified the board and the current
transceiver setting.
> ... (the switch is 3COM office connect DualSpeedSwitch 16).
Which model? What era? A few of the early 3Com switches did have
autonegotiation timing flaws. Most are managed switches, and the proper
work-around is to set them to forced 100baseTx half duplex operation.
> In order to fix the problem i must unplug the power cord(there is no other
> way to copletely stop powering the computer) wait a few seconds plug it
This is because of the Wake-On-LAN capability of the board. It
continues link beat in soft-power-off mode. Depending on the
motherboard (if standby-power is supplied through the PCI connector),
you might be able to change the behavior by disconnecting the WOL
cable. But that's not a solution.
> again and start the computer from the button and check to see if the led is
> blinking if yes reapeat this action as much times as is necessary for the
> led to stop blinking. The interesting part is that if the NIC is blinking
> and i load windows the things are working just fine i think that windows
> driver has some initialisation (the led stops blinking) which the linux
> driver does not have but these are just suppositions.
The Windows driver likely resets the transceiver. The 3c59x driver
avoids doing this. Rapidly resetting the link results in bad behavior
from some switches, and some Linux configurations results in rapid
restarts of the driver.
> Notice that i have some lines in the messages log "working situation" which
> looks like this:
>
> ping -f some.host
> Dec 30 12:52:01 oboroten kernel: eth0: vortex_error(), status=0xe081
You have the debug/message level turned up past the default, and the
driver is reporting that statistics overflowed. Check the error counts
in /proc/net/dev. This is likely unrelated.
> i have running 4 machines with the same HW configuration and the problem is
> reproducable on all of them. I have noticed this problem since kernel 2.4.2
> and it is here by now.
Try the driver release from
http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/test/3c59x.c
> I have this problem often when we have power failure and my boss is not very
> happy the servers to be down when i am not in the office after power
> failure.
> I have executed and the diagnostic programs mii-diag and vortex-diag their
> logs are attached to the mail too.
Does 'mii-diag --reset' result in a working link?
--
Donald Becker [email protected]
Scyld Computing Corporation http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210 Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403 410-990-9993