Question about bce driver

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:30:21 -0500 Josh Paetzel <josh at tcbug.org> 
wrote:

> On Wednesday 11 July 2007, Tom Judge wrote:
>> Paul Schmehl wrote:
>> > I'm running 6.1 RELEASE (i386) and I've been replacing the
>> > if_bce.c file with a slightly newer one that at least got the
>> > driver working without hard lockups that required a reboot to
>> > fix.  (Rather problematic on a remotely located web server.)
>> >
>> > If I download the latest driver from cvs (1.33), should I also
>> > replace the if_bcefw.h and if_bcereg.h files with the newer
>> > versions?  Will the NIC work without creating new problems?
>> > Right now I get an occasional "flapping" of the NIC link state
>> > (down, up , down, up, etc.) but it at least works most of the
>> > time.  I don't want to buildworld and get suprised by a
>> > non-functioning NIC.  :-)
>> >
>> > If I use the newer versions, will I also need to use some other
>> > newer files that are called by them?  Or would it be better to
>> > upgrade the entire box to 6.2?
>> >
>> > FreeBSD www.stovebolt.com 6.1-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p10
>> > # 2:
>> >
>> > grep bce /var/run/dmesg.boot
>> > bce0: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
>> > 0xf4000000-0xf5ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci9
>> > bce0: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
>> > miibus0: <MII bus> on bce0
>> > bce0: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ad
>> > bce1: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
>> > 0xf8000000-0xf9ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci5
>> > bce1: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
>> > miibus1: <MII bus> on bce1
>> > bce1: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ab
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>>  From the testing that I have been doing for the last few months
>> the driver in 6.2 is stable if you are not using jumbo frames and
>> there is a light-moderate network load.
>>
>> However if you want to use Jumbo frames the driver is very
>> unstable.  I posted a patch against 6.2 which should fix some load
>> based issues in the driver with standard frame sizes.
>>
>> Tom
>
> Paul, I was never able to solve the link up/link down problems with
> the driver....I was using the drivers from STABLE for a while, and
> without jumbo frames everything worked somewhat ok most of the
> time....the ultimate solution was to just get the intel PCI-X card
> and stop using the broadcoms.

Ouch!  So even updating to the latest driver doesn't solve the link state 
issue?  I don't use jumbo frames, but it's critical that this server remain 
in service 24/7, so I don't want to upgrade if there's no improvement in 
that issue.  Switching to the Intel card would be a bit of a PITA on a 
remote, rack-mount server.  :-(

-- 
Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/