"Michael J. McGillick" wrote:
I just bought and installed SuSE 6.4. I'm a first time SuSE user. I come from a Red Hat background, and so far, I have to say that I like some of the differences I see with SuSE. It's going to take a little getting used to, but anything worth it does.
I would agree here. Welcome to SuSE!
I've noticed a problem with the recent 2.2.14 kernels, and wanted to see if anyone else is running into the same problem. I've confirmed that it happens on both Red Hat 6.2, and now SuSE. In my Linux box, I have two 3Com 10/100 Ethernet cards. Here is what cat /proc/pci shows:
Bus 1, device 4, function 0: Ethernet controller: 3Com Unknown device (rev 116). Vendor id=10b7. Device id=9200. Medium devsel. IRQ 9. Master Capable. Latency=80. Min Gnt=10. Max Lat=10. I/O at 0xec00 [0xec01]. Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfebff400 [0xfebff400].
Bus 2, device 2, function 0: Ethernet controller: 3Com Unknown device (rev 116). Vendor id=10b7. Device id=9200. Medium devsel. IRQ 11. Master Capable. Latency=80. MinGnt=10. Max Lat=10. I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdc01]. Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfeaff800 [0xfeaff800].
The first card, eth0 gets its IP Address by DHCP. The second card, I've manually assigned an IP Address of 192.168.1.1, and it is the gateway for my internal network. Up until running distributions with the 2.2.14, I've never had a problem with either of these cards. They are fairly new (6 months old if that).
The problem I'm running into is that my system seems to sporadically lock up. I believe the problem is related to the Ethernet cards. I've noticed that sometimes I have no internet connection on my internal machines. I do an ifconfig on the Linux box, and it shows both cards up and running. So I try to ping anyone of the machines on my internal network. Instant lock-up. I can't change to any other consoles, CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work, nothing. The only method I have is to turn off the power and reboot.
I did some reading on having 2 Ethernet cards in the machine. I thought the problem I was having was related to the fact that I had both cards coming up as modules. So I recompiled the kernel, and made sure to add in the driver, not leave it as a module. The same thing happens, only not as often.
Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone know if there were changes made secifically to the 3Com 3c90x driver code in release 2.2.14? It may be a case that the driver wasn't coded correctly before, and now that it's been fixed, it's bringing to light a problem. Or it may be that this driver code is now broken in 2.2.14. Anyone know if I'm causing myself a problem by using two of the same cards for my Ethernet cards?
AFAIK, 3Com 905x cards have always been quite dodgy, especially the 905b version. You can find that some 905x cards work fine with one driver, but not with the other, and vica versa. From what I can tell there must be some diference in the hardware of the cards. It probably is a driver problem. Are the lockups reproducable at all? Maybe you mention it to the driver maintainer (probably Donald Becker). Unfortunately I can't give you much more help than that.
I also noticed that /proc/pci shows these cards as unknown. Is it possible I'm using the wrong driver? Any hints or suggestions would really be appreciated.
Good luck in finding a solution, Chris -- __ _ -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Chris Reeves /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ICQ# 22219005 _\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/