em driver testing

[Scott Long]

Jack Vogel wrote:
> On 11/7/06, Clayton Milos <clay at milos.co.za> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Jack
>>
>>
>> I patched the driver and re-compiled the kernel and userland.
>>
>> All appears well with the em driver now. No more errors on it.
>> I am getting watchdog timeouts on the xl driver now though. It was
>> happenning before at the same time as the em ones. Now I've passed a 
>> lot of
>> traffic on the em interface but the xl interface gets watchdog errors. 
>> The
>> em interface still works fine but the xl one is no usable after this.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure what it is, but the fact that a variety of nic drivers
> are having this
> same problem indicates that something changed in the if_timer and its
> caller, someone knowing that subsystem would be better qualified to
> say what.
> 
> The other drivers should do the same thing that em did, and stop using
> the net layer timer :)
> 
> Jack

I think it's more that the if_em driver watchdog was insulating the 
if_xl driver.  Once the if_em component was removed, the if_xl driver
was the next in line to be a victim.  So yes, like you say, all of the
drivers need to be fixed.

Scott