em0: watchdog timeout -- resetting (6.1-STABLE)

[Jack Vogel]

On 9/14/06, David C. Myers <myers at aedifice.net> wrote:
>
> > watchdogs mean that the transmit ring is not being cleaned, so the
> > question is what is your machine doing at 100% cpu, if its that busy
> > the network watchdogs may just be a side effect and not the real
> > problem?
>
>
> I get them with a completely idle machine.  My home directory is mounted
> via NFS (from FreeBSD 6.1 on an amd64 machine), and with the kernel from
> earlier this week, the machine would just hang for 30 seconds to a
> couple of minutes.  A slew of "watchdog timeout" messages would appear.
>   Then I'd get a moment's responsiveness out of the machine, then
> another long wait, then a moment's responsiveness, then a long wait...
>
> The machine would never recover from this cycle (at least, so far as I
> was patient enough to wait).
>
> Going back to a kernel dated late July resolved everything.
>
> Someone else asked me for the hardware version of my em0 board...
>
>
> em0 at pci2:10:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x002e8086 chip=0x100e8086 rev=0x02
> hdr=0x00    vendor   = 'Intel Corporation'
>      device   = '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
>      class    = network
>      subclass = ethernet

Could you perhaps go back to the kernel you say was stable and then
drop in the latest em driver? Or if that has issues building do it the
other way around, take the em driver from the build that gave you no
problems and put it on this kernel you are running now?

It would be helpful to know if this is a driver problem or something
in the stack.

Cheers,

Jack