MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <18916.47906.73896.346385@stoffel.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:34:42 -0400
From: "John Stoffel" <john@stoffel.org>
To: Yan Seiner <yan@seiner.com>
Cc: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@verizon.net>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       netdev@vger.kernel.org, aabdulla@nvidia.com
Subject: Re: mcp55 forcedeth woes
In-Reply-To: <49E49F46.8030509@seiner.com>
References: <e3e0f4f0ca9fdce35c24b30559d10f31.squirrel@www.datavault.us>
	<200904132100.58056.gene.heskett@verizon.net>
	<49E3EF9F.6090600@seiner.com>
	<200904132224.13716.gene.heskett@verizon.net>
	<49E49F46.8030509@seiner.com>
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 5152
Lines: 121

>>>>> "Yan" == Yan Seiner <yan@seiner.com> writes:

Yan> Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Monday 13 April 2009, Yan Seiner wrote:
>> 
>>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Monday 13 April 2009, Yan Seiner wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I have a few Asus M2N-SLI deluxe mobos.  These mobos have the MCP55
>>>>> chipset and two 1gb ethernet ports.  Occasionally, and for no reason that
>>>>> I can figure out, these ports will die.  There are various ways to try
>>>>> and fix these; they seem to be about 50% effective, and approach
>>>>> something akin to voodoo.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Based on this discussion here:
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/16212/
>>>>> 
>>>>> I've gotten the ability to turn the ports on and off somewhat.
>>>>> 
>>>>> For port 0,
>>>>> 
>>>>> ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 10 duplex full
>>>>> 
>>>>> turns on the link, and gets me half-duplex, 10mb/sec. Not much, granted.
>>>>> 
>>>>> ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full
>>>>> 
>>>>> causes the link to go up and down on about a 2 second cycle.
>>>>> 
>>>>> ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on
>>>>> 
>>>>> causes the link to drop.
>>>>> 
>>>>> For port 1, the behavior is similar, except that I can get a stable 100
>>>>> mbit connection.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So the problem is in the autoneg code. It's a driver issue as this is
>>>>> reported widely to work under windows of various flavors.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm running 2.6.29.1; I'm ok with patching and building kernels, but I'm
>>>>> not a kernel hacker.
>>>>> 
>>>>> What, if anything, can I provide and do to fix this?
>>>>> 
>>>> It was in 2.6.29-rc8 or 9 that they finally got the ability to turn them
>>>> back on on my identical mobo.  Through most of the 29-rcx series we had
>>>> the choice of rebooting with the reset button, or powering everything
>>>> associated with the ports down for about 2 minutes so they would forget
>>>> they were turned off by a graceful shutdown.  Now they are turned off (and
>>>> I've still NDI why) and back on like they are supposed to be.   I called
>>>> that a PIMA.
>>>> 
>>> Yeah, I've been fighting this for a while....  The boards are rock-solid
>>> under load, which is why I like them.... But this is a PITA.
>>> 
>>> This board worked fine, then I shutdown and the ports have not come back
>>> since.  I'm running 2.6.29.1 - no joy on the ports.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Shut it down, including removing the power cord, and unplug all ethernet 
>> cables attached, give it time to fully discharge all stored power in the caps, 
>> at least 30 secs, I usually go make a cup of tea in the microwave, so its 
>> about 3 minutes.  Plug everything back in and power it up, they should work 
>> again.
>> 
>> However, I've been running 2.6.29.1-rc2, and that has not been a problem, I 
>> can see the leds on the ports go plumb dark at it runs the shutdown, and come 
>> back on about 15 seconds before the init.d/network script runs as it boots up.
>> 
>> 
>>> I'm building forcedeth from .30-rc1 - we'll see if that helps.
>>> Something like 15% of the driver changed, so it's still in very heavy
>>> development.
>>> 
>> 
>> Wow!  Like you, I'm using forcedeth. 2.6.29.1-rc1 did have a short uptime for 
>> forcedeth bug IIRC, but so far, -rc2 has lasted longer than KDE-4.2.1 on this 
>> F10 system will, I had an 8 day uptime at first, and I'm in the 5th day again.  
>> I killed it the first time screwing with some worthless bluetooth dongles I 
>> got from USBGear.  Locked it up tighter than a Nebraska bulls ass in flytime.  
>> Had to use the reset button. :(
>> 
Yan> I followed Gene's advice and got some progress....

Yan> port 0 is now fully functional.  Port 1, however, remains in its 
Yan> semi-zombie state.  Maybe I'll take the machine off-line longer next 
Yan> time.   Maybe I'll sacrifice a black and white chicken at the same time.

Yan> I also back-ported 2.9.30-rc1 forcedeth.c to my 2.6.29.1 kernel; no 
Yan> difference whatsoever.

Yan> One other observation:

Yan> On the switch, the status LEDs glow with half-brightness when I enable 
Yan> port 1 using ethtool...  This leads me to suspect that the voltage 
Yan> levels on the port aren't normal.  Not being a hardware engineer, I have 
Yan> no idea what importance this has; I am offering this as an observation.

I've also got one of these boards, but I seem to recall that 2.6.28
and higher worked just fine, but when I was chasing another problem
with complete system crashes when running tcpdump, I found the dead
port problem as well.

Thanks for posting your workaround, they'll be a big help.  Esp if I
put them in early to the system boot process as a quick hack.  

The M2N-SLI Deluxe boards are nice though, stable stable stable.  I've
been very happy with mine.  I wonder if there's a newer BIOS which
might address some of these issues as well, since it seems to me that
the BIOS, esp on power up, should be reseting the ports to something
more sane.

John
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/