[Bug 229727] bge watchdog timeout with MacBook Pro

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=229727

Eugene Grosbein <eugen at freebsd.org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Summary|On install, Broadcom        |bge watchdog timeout with
                   |chipset doesn't receive     |MacBook Pro
                   |DHCPOFFER                   |

--- Comment #17 from Eugene Grosbein <eugen at freebsd.org> ---
SIMPLEX flag is pretty normal and should be. It just says the NIC does not get
incoming copies of frames it have just sent and system does not need to filter
them out. Almost all modern ethernet interfaces have this flag.

So, your real problem are "bge watchdog timeouts" and not DHCP. These point to
some kind of driver problem or hardware problem (cables, ethernet switch and/or
ports etc.) Are you having no problems with Debian and EXACTLY same set of
hardware including cables? If no, try replacing hardware with known working
set.
If yes, this rules out hardware problem and points to driver problem.

There is Korean blog article http://hyogeollee.blogspot.com/2011/11/ of year
2011 describing similar problem with FreeBSD on MacBook Pro (2010). It says:

"In case of bge which is Ethernet driver, watchdog timeout occurs and it is not
operated. However, if you add the polling option to the kernel configuration,
it will work normally. Maybe there is a problem on the driver side. If you
build by adding options DEVICE_POLLING to the kernel configuration, and then
boot to the new kernel, it works fine."

The kernel option DEVICE_POLLING prevents usage of MSI within bge(4) driver
that may be source of this problem due to wrong interrupt handling. There are
other ways to disable usage of MSI. You should try to escape to bootloader
prompt at early stage while booting installation media and do:

set hw.pci.enable_msi=0
set hw.pci.enable_msix=0
boot

Then check if this works to run using static IP address. If so, re-check with
DHCP.

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