em interrupt storm

[Bill Moran]

Just experienced an "interrupt storm" on an em device that disabled a
server until I could reboot it.

My initial research turned up this thread:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2005-November/058336.html

Which seems related, even if it is a little old.  I'm aware that there
have been problems with recent versions of the em driver but I haven't
been following them closely enough, and there's a LOT of mail traffic
on this topic.

Note that this is a FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p37 system.  An upgrade is
possible, but this is a production system and the problem occurs
infrequently, so I'm reluctant to schedule downtime unless I have good
reason to believe that it will fix the problem.

Anyone remember if the above problem was fixed in more recent versions,
or knows enough about the issue to comment on whether I'm barking up
the correct tree or not?  I'm pretty early in the diagnosis on this,
but I'm looking for pointers to keep me from doing random upgrades or
other time-wasting activities.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.

wmoran at collaborativefusion.com
Phone: 412-422-3463x4023

****************************************************************
IMPORTANT: This message contains confidential information and is
intended only for the individual named. If the reader of this
message is not an intended recipient (or the individual
responsible for the delivery of this message to an intended
recipient), please be advised that any re-use, dissemination,
distribution or copying of this message is prohibited. Please
notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received
this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system.
E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or
error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost,
destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The
sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or
omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a
result of e-mail transmission.
****************************************************************



IMPORTANT: This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient (or the individual responsible for the delivery of this message to an intended recipient), please be advised that any re-use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is prohibited.  Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system.