Marvell chipsets on 8-CURRENT and XP x64 won't talk with one another

[Garrett Cooper]

Garrett Cooper wrote:
> Tom Judge wrote:
>> Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>> Mike Silbersack wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Just to clarify, how are the two hooked together?  Is it over 
>>>>>> gigabit switch, a 10mbps hub, or directly cabled together?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Mike
>>>>>
>>>>>   Sure. They're both connected over a gigabit switch, but the 
>>>>> Windows driver's kind of sketchy because it keeps on switching 
>>>>> between 100MBit and 1GBit. I haven't really paid that much 
>>>>> attention to what speed the FreeBSD msk driver is registering at.
>>>>> -Garrett
>>>>
>>>> Ah ha!
>>>>
>>>> I had the flopping between 100mbps and 1gbps problem with some 
>>>> Intel cards once - some of the machines in the lab were fine, 
>>>> others kept switching back and forth.  We eventually narrowed it 
>>>> down to the cables we had hand-made; some of them just weren't up 
>>>> to snuff, and the NIC apparently decided that it had to go back 
>>>> down to 100.
>>>>
>>>> I think you should switch your gigabit switch out for a 100mbps 
>>>> switch and see if the network becomes more reliable.
>>>>
>>>> -Mike
>>>
>>>    I think I've discovered what the issue is. I believe the problem 
>>> lies in the fact that the FreeBSD Marvell chipset driver (msk) isn't 
>>> up to speed with the Gigabit transferring on my particular 
>>> chipset(s). That's why transfers were most likely working with my 
>>> laptop (Apple with 100MBit Broadcom) vs my desktop (Asus MB with 
>>> another Marvell chipset driver) and another laptop (Dell laptop with 
>>> Broadcom Gigabit).
>>>    How do I tell ifconfig via rc.conf to downgrade the max speed to 
>>> 100MBit duplex?
>>> Thanks,
>>> -Garrett
>>
>> You would need to hard code the interface configuration on the switch 
>> and box.  This is only possible if you have a managed switch and the 
>> methods on the switch are manufacturer and model dependent.
>>
>> On FreeBSD however it is trivial for example "ifconfig em0 media 
>> 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex".
>>
>> This will disable speed negotiation and therefore must be configured 
>> at both ends of the link.
>>
>> Tom
>
> Well, this is interesting. I used a crappy switch (100MBit SOHO 
> switch), in place of my Netgear non-managed gigabit switch, and the 
> same thing occurred on the XP x64 machine.
>
> I may have forgotten to mention that at one time both machines were 
> running XP variants of some sort (x64 and x86), and they worked 
> perfectly fine with one another >_>...
>
> Here's some additional info:
>
> optimus# arp -a
> ? (192.168.0.1) at (incomplete) on msk0 [ethernet] # Dummy gateway
> ? (192.168.0.42) at 00:11:24:2f:15:bc on msk0 [ethernet] # iBook 
> (broadcom adapter)
> ? (192.168.0.47) at 00:1a:92:d2:f7:f6 on msk0 [ethernet] # Win XP x64 
> machine
> ? (192.168.0.255) at ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff on msk0 permanent [ethernet]
> optimus# ifconfig msk0
> msk0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 
> 1500
>        options=9a<TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM>
>        ether 00:1b:fc:45:9b:5c
>        inet 192.168.0.45 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 255.255.255.0
>        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex,flag0,flag1>)
>        status: active
> ifconfig_msk0="inet 192.168.0.45 broadcast 255.255.255.0"
> # media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex"
> defaultrouter="192.168.0.1"
> optimus# netstat -nr
> Routing tables
>
> Internet:
> Destination        Gateway            Flags    Refs      Use  Netif 
> Expire
> default            192.168.0.1        UGS         0        0   msk0
> 127.0.0.1          127.0.0.1          UH          0       12    lo0
> 192.168.0.0/24     link#1             UC          0        0   msk0
> 192.168.0.1        link#1             UHLW        2        0   msk0
> 192.168.0.42       00:11:24:2f:15:bc  UHLW        1      179   msk0   
> 1028
> 192.168.0.47       00:1a:92:d2:f7:f6  UHLW        1       21   msk0   
> 1162
> 192.168.0.255      ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff  UHLWb       1       49   msk0
>
> arp and everything's show the correct information on the XP end, even 
> after I removed the 'dummy gateway' on both machines..
>
> Next course of action? Snort? tcpdump?
>
> Thanks,
> -Garrett

    I'm running tcpdump on my Mac and I noted a lot of 'bad checksums' 
(0x081c was the official error in all cases), then consulted the msk 
driver. It appears that there's a bug with Yukon II chipsets with the 
hardware checksumming and I wonder whether or not the chipset that I 
have is affected by this issue as well.
    I'll provide my chipset/model info in my next reply (can't access it 
from this PC).
-Garrett