82573 xfers pause, no watchdog timeouts, DCGDIS ineffective (7.2-R)

[Royce Williams]

We have servers with dual 82573 NICs that work well during low-throughput activity, but during high-volume activity, they pause shortly after transfers start and do not recover.  Other sessions to the system are not affected.

These systems are being repurposed, jumping from 6.3 to 7.2.  The same system and its kin do not exhibit the symptom under 6.3-RELEASE-p13.  The symptoms appear under freebsd-updated 7.2-RELEASE GENERIC kernel with no tuning.

Previously, we've been using DCGDIS.EXE (from Jack Vogel) for this symptom.  The first system to be repurposed accepts DCGDIS with 'Updated' and subsequent 'update not needed', with no relief.  

Notably, there are no watchdog timeout errors - unlike our various Supermicro models still running FreeBSD 6.x.  All of our other 7.x Supermicro flavors had already received the flash update and haven't show the symptom.

Details follow.

Kernel:

rand# uname -a
FreeBSD rand.acsalaska.net 7.2-RELEASE-p4 FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p4 #0: Fri Oct  2 12:21:39 UTC 2009     root at i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

sysctls:

rand# sysctl dev.em
dev.em.0.%desc: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection 6.9.6
dev.em.0.%driver: em
dev.em.0.%location: slot=0 function=0
dev.em.0.%pnpinfo: vendor=0x8086 device=0x108c subvendor=0x15d9 subdevice=0x108c class=0x020000
dev.em.0.%parent: pci13
dev.em.0.debug: -1
dev.em.0.stats: -1
dev.em.0.rx_int_delay: 0
dev.em.0.tx_int_delay: 66
dev.em.0.rx_abs_int_delay: 66
dev.em.0.tx_abs_int_delay: 66
dev.em.0.rx_processing_limit: 100
dev.em.1.%desc: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection 6.9.6
dev.em.1.%driver: em
dev.em.1.%location: slot=0 function=0
dev.em.1.%pnpinfo: vendor=0x8086 device=0x108c subvendor=0x15d9 subdevice=0x108c class=0x020000
dev.em.1.%parent: pci14
dev.em.1.debug: -1
dev.em.1.stats: -1
dev.em.1.rx_int_delay: 0
dev.em.1.tx_int_delay: 66
dev.em.1.rx_abs_int_delay: 66
dev.em.1.tx_abs_int_delay: 66
dev.em.1.rx_processing_limit: 100

kenv:

rand# kenv | grep smbios | egrep -v 'socket|serial|uuid|tag|0123456789'
smbios.bios.reldate="03/05/2008"
smbios.bios.vendor="Phoenix Technologies LTD"
smbios.bios.version="6.00"
smbios.chassis.maker="Supermicro"
smbios.planar.maker="Supermicro"
smbios.planar.product="PDSMi "
smbios.planar.version="PCB Version"
smbios.system.maker="Supermicro"
smbios.system.product="PDSMi"


The system is not yet production, so I can invasively abuse it if needed.  The other systems are in production under 6.3-RELEASE-p13 and can also be inspected.

Any pointers appreciated.

Royce