NIC card problems....

[Net Virtual Mailing Lists]

Hello,


I regret that I have never posted to this list before, despite the fact I
have been using FreeBSD in one form or another for many years now (since
2.x era).  I'm a bit cranky, so please do not take any of this wrong.  I
have a system running FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE (bites tongue).

In any event, I just have to ask: what the heck is up with support for
network cards?... I mean, seriously, no offense intended to all of the
folks who work so hard on this stuff, but every single FreeBSD system I
have installed has at one time or another encountered *some* problem
relating to its network card.  It would be nice if somewhere there was
some statement of a "fact" that NIC ____ is known to work well with
FreeBSD.  I'm aware of all of the FUD out there, about people beating
their chests saying how wonderful NIC-A is or NIC-B is, and I've tried
'em all and had problems with each and every one of them so far.  Surely
someone out there must use FreeBSD in an environment where the "network
is the bottleneck"^2 - right?....

By this I mean it is a development system which runs 4 simultaneous
processes which run 24x7 (and use network bandwidth in spades - most
across a 100mb pipe), a web server, postgres, and nfs server -- some of
these processes needed to have MAXDSIZ increased to support up to 1gb (I
set MAXDSIZ="(1024*1024*1024)") (and yes, this excessive memory
consumption is beyond my control)...  The system has 2gb of ram with 8gb
of swap (just to make sure!) and is a 600Mhz AMD K6... I've ensured that
all of these "memory intensive" processes are forked so that they are
able to release their memory when finished.  I don't really care how slow
it runs -- as long as it runs reliably.  I know that this may not be an
ideal configuration given what I'm asking from this limited hardware, but
I did not experience any reliability problems prior to installing FreeBSD
on this exact same hardware (more about this later) with similar tweaks
to just make sure everything is able to run (regardless of actual
performance).

My latest problem is with a:

dc0: <ADMtek AN985 10/100BaseTX> port 0xe800-0xe8ff mem 0xe6080000-
0xe60803ff irq 11 at device 10.0 on pci0
dc0: Ethernet address: 00:0c:41:ed:ae:85

...  after several hours of *HEAVY* (I'm probably understating this)
utilization I get:

dc0: TX underrun -- increasing TX threshold
dc0: TX underrun -- increasing TX threshold
.. repeats numerous times..
dc0: TX underrun -- using store and forward mode


.. at this point the system simply reboots.  I have attempted to apply a
patch (<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=34236&f=raw>) which I
found which patches sys/pci/if_dcreg.h and sys/pci/if_dc.c.  The patch
file was not correct for my version and it looks to me as if sys/pci/
if_dcreg.h already had the changes applied, but I went ahead and added
the few minor changes it had for pci/sys/if_dc.c, just on a whim (I
should probably note that my version of if_dc.c before the patch was:
"$FreeBSD: src/sys/pci/if_dc.c,v 1.9.2.56 2004/04/22 22:03:27 ru Exp").   

.. In any event, my pager just went off again, the system rebooted, again
with the exact same symptom.

You know, I don't really care what NIC I use - I really don't.  I'm not
so much interested in trying to figure out why this NIC is giving me
grief as much as I am in finding one that will work.  I would just like
someone somewhere to tell me what is a stable NIC to use for FreeBSD,
minus all the speculation as to what might or might not work correctly. 
Just tell me what to buy and I'll go buy it, really I will!  If I need a
specific chipset with a specific revision that's fine too just please
tell me what it is.  Hell at this point I'll even look for NICs from
specific lot numbers.  I'm getting ready to roll out a production version
of what I've been testing the last few months and I simply would like to
know what NIC I can depend on to not give me these sort of fits....

Thanks and again sorry if I seem frustrated, but you are getting a 10
second summary of 8 years of frustration.  Maybe I just have bad luck and
always get the "bad NIC", I dunno.

Other than this repeating issue with the support for NIC cards, I've
found FreeBSd to be absolutely rock solid.  It is a real shame that you
guys don't get more support from the hardware manufacturers.  I truly
wish that I were savvy enough to even know where to begin debugging
something like this or to help with the development effort.  Perhaps
someday I will be, who knows.

For whatever its worth this exact system has been running Solaris 2.6
(x86 of course) for the last couple of years and has never crashed for
any reason, ever.  I installed FreeBSD 4.10 because it is what I had
laying around and it is what this client wants to use for their project.
 Over the past week these crashes occur several times throughout the day
and obviously I can't release this project until I am satisfied that it
will run reliably.

..God you have no idea how much I hated writing 90% this, I hope nobody
takes it too negatively -- I am just quite frustrated at the moment. 
This really almost brought a tear to my eye -- I like FreeBSD that much.


.. perhaps NIC cards, FreeBSD, and I simply are incapable of living in
harmony.. <sigh>

- Greg