Strange networking problems after update 5.2.1->5.3

Robert Watson rwatson at freebsd.org
Mon Jan 3 05:22:51 PST 2005


On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Gerrit Kühn wrote:

> arp things look ok, but I cannot ping the router, though I can ping any
> other host (the same thing I already noticed here at work). But my
> router at home complains about this: 
> 
> arp: ether address is multicast for IP address 192.168.1.4! 

Ah, now this is very interesting -- could you send me the output of
"ifconfig" on the interface?  Could you tell me if a tcpdump on another
host shows the same hardware address as the source of packets from this
host as ifconfig shows?  Likewise, dmesg?  A multicast source address
might cause other systems to treat your system like it had the plague,
with some OS's ignoring it, others not, etc.  So if the router refuses to
talk to your system because of its ethernet address, that might explain
many of the symptoms you are seeing.

> >Somewhere during all of this, you will probably find the broken bit --
> >packets missing at some step, the wrong address, or the like.  If you find
> >anything that isn't fixed via a configuration change (i.e., failed
> >checksums, no way to explain the address being put in the packet, etc),
> >let us know.
> 
> The best thing I can guess here is that 5.3 in contrast to 5.2.1 (all
> three cards worked flawlessly with 5.2.1) has some problems dealing with
> my hardware. :-)
> 
> I'm anything but a network guru and will see if I have some time to dig
> further into the packets. Perhaps I can find the broken bit then.

I'm guessing it's a driver problem of some sort based on the above, but a
few more details as described above would be helpful in confirming that.

I've CC'd Warner Losh on the general principle that if it's a problem with
a PCCARD ethernet adapter, he might be able to help (perhaps especially if
it's possible to ship him one of the cards).

Robert N M Watson




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