Freezes while copying large files over network

Benjamin Braatz sean at inmymind.de
Wed Sep 21 14:56:21 PDT 2005


Hello,

I have got the following problem with FreeBSD, which occured with 5.4- 
RELEASE
(installed from CD) as well as 6-BETA4 (since I learned how to  
upgrade/compile
system and kernel):

When I copy large (or many) files (like mpeg-movies or my mp3  
collection) over the
local network via scp the system freezes very often, where freezes  
means that the
computer does not react to keyboard or mouse input and is not  
reachable from
the network. I can only do a hard reset.

Perhaps it is important that these freezes never happen when fetching  
large files
from the internet (like distfiles), but only in the local network  
(DSL router with the
FreeBSD host connected with network cable and my iBook connected over
WLAN).

This happened with the GENERIC kernel config as well as my own.
Anyway, here is the config I currently use:

machine         i386
cpu             I686_CPU
ident           LOIS
options         SCHED_4BSD              # 4BSD scheduler
options         PREEMPTION              # Enable kernel thread  
preemption
options         INET                    # InterNETworking
options         FFS                     # Berkeley Fast Filesystem
options         SOFTUPDATES             # Enable FFS soft updates  
support
options         MSDOSFS                 # MSDOS Filesystem
options         CD9660                  # ISO 9660 Filesystem
options         COMPAT_43               # Compatible with BSD 4.3  
[KEEP THIS!]
options         COMPAT_FREEBSD5         # Compatible with FreeBSD5
options         SYSVSHM                 # SYSV-style shared memory
options         SYSVMSG                 # SYSV-style message queues
options         SYSVSEM                 # SYSV-style semaphores
options         _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING # POSIX P1003_1B real- 
time extensions
options         KBD_INSTALL_CDEV        # install a CDEV entry in /dev
options         AHC_REG_PRETTY_PRINT    # Print register bitfields in  
debug
options         AHD_REG_PRETTY_PRINT    # Print register bitfields in  
debug
options         ADAPTIVE_GIANT          # Giant mutex is adaptive.
device          apic                    # I/O APIC
device          isa
device          eisa
device          pci
device          fdc
device          ata
device          atadisk         # ATA disk drives
device          atapicd         # ATAPI CDROM drives
options         ATA_STATIC_ID   # Static device numbering
device          scbus           # SCSI bus (required for SCSI)
device          da              # Direct Access (disks)
device          atkbdc          # AT keyboard controller
device          atkbd           # AT keyboard
device          psm             # PS/2 mouse
device          vga             # VGA video card driver
device          splash          # Splash screen and screen saver support
device          sc
device          agp             # support several AGP chipsets
device          npx
device          apm
device          pmtimer
# ISA Ethernet NICs.  pccard NICs included.
device          lnc             # NE2100, NE32-VL Lance Ethernet cards
device          loop            # Network loopback
device          mem             # Memory and kernel memory devices
device          io              # I/O device
device          random          # Entropy device
device          ether           # Ethernet support
device          pty             # Pseudo-ttys (telnet etc)
device          bpf             # Berkeley packet filter
device          uhci            # UHCI PCI->USB interface
device          usb             # USB Bus (required)
device          ugen            # Generic
device          umass           # Disks/Mass storage - Requires scbus  
and da
device sound
device snd_sbc
device snd_sb16

What I'm curious about is that the driver for the network card (lnc,  
which I used
because the GENERIC kernel used it automatically and it worked) is in  
the section
for ISA cards, but IIRC it is a PCI card.

dmesg says:
lnc0: <PCNet/PCI Ethernet adapter> port 0xe800-0xe81f mem  
0xf0004000-0xf000401f irq 9 at device 13.0 on pci0
lnc0: Attaching PCNet/PCI Ethernet adapter
lnc0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
lnc0: Ethernet address: 00:80:1e:08:0f:75
lnc0: if_start running deferred for Giant
lnc0: PCnet-PCI

Also looks like PCI, doesn't it?

I also sometimes get messages like "lnc0: Missed packet -- no receive  
buffer".
May this have something to do with the lock-ups? There is not always  
such a
message before the system freezes and not every message leads to a  
freeze, but
they are both related to copying large amounts of data (over the  
local network).

I'm kind of new to BSD (have some experience with Gentoo Linux), so I  
do not
really know, which further information I could give.

Thank you for any hints, what I could try to resolve this.

-- 
Benjamin Braatz
sean at inmymind.de


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