[192] in linux-net channel archive
Re: 1.2.4 lockup
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steffen Grunewald)
Tue Apr 11 05:14:13 1995
From: steffen@gfz-potsdam.de (Steffen Grunewald)
To: marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl (Marek Michalkiewicz)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 09:21:56 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199504101743.TAA00236@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl> from "Marek Michalkiewicz" at Apr 10, 95 07:42:59 pm
"Marek Michalkiewicz writes"
|>
|> Linus wrote:
|> [...]
|> > 1.2.4 patches, for example: that particular release fixes at least two
|> > _longstanding_ lockup problems.
|>
|> Hmmm, there is still at least one in 1.2.4... The system was up 3 days
|> and locked up today. I can see these random lockups since about 1.1.7x.
|> Both Linux boxes here have the same type of ethernet card, identified as
|> (no, not a NE2000...) WD8003-old. Both sometimes lock up. Are there
|> any known problems with these cards? They are old, probably very few
|> people still use them, maybe the driver is not tested enough with them?
In my understanding, those are just `normal' WD8003 cards with one small
hardware bug on them so they report the wrong IRQ set by the jumpers
(in fact, they do report IRQ 3 in any case). In earlier versions of Linux
it was enough to hard-code the used IRQ number to get the card work with
the standard kernel of that time (was around 1.0.x, I think, and solved
by Donald in some 1.1.x release - I'm not sure when it was, but should have
been before 1.1.18, right?)
I don't know whether there were other modifications affecting the functionality
of the driver.
But - I can tell you that we're running _lots_ of wd8003-old's here, without
problems. Well, the machines involved are not heavily used (no WWW server
etc.), but are used. Normal net traffic, no lockup. Kernel 1.1.18 or 1.1.59
(we are Slackware addicts here :-)
|>
|> Of course the lockups may be caused by something else, but just in case,
|> I am cc'ing this message to linux-net.
|>
|> These lockups look always the same: no messages, no Ctrl-Alt-Del, no
|> response to ping. Few days ago the system (running 1.2.2) was up for
|> 13 days without any problems, but for some reason I had to reboot it,
|> and then it locked up after a few minutes.
As stated above, there was no kernel upgrade for a quite long time.
So maybe some later kernel patches have introduced a bug into the WD
device driver (perhaps the modularization code ?!?!?)
|>
|> Happy hacking,
|> -- Marek Michalkiewicz <marekm@i17linuxa.ists.pwr.wroc.pl>
|>
--
Steffen Grunewald | email steffen@gfz-potsdam.de | phone (+49)-331-2881245
GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Telegrafenberg A3, D-14773 Potsdam, Germany
#include <disclaimer.h> /* .sig: Permission denied */
