bce watchdog timeout occurred, resetting

[John Fitzgerald]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net> wrote:
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> John Fitzgerald wrote:
>> Many thanks. Is there any change this would lock out the interface
>> permanently, requiring a manual (local) ifconfig up fix? This server
>> is managed remotely.
>
> As far as I am aware, upgrading from 6.2 to 6.3 should be moderately
> safe.  It depends on, however, how your kernel is configured and how
> bce(4) is being loaded.
>
> It looks like that using nextboot(8) can resolve part of your issue (as
> long as it can be rebooted by remote hands) if used carefully - install
> kernel into /boot/kernel.new and use it to start system for once, then
> if everything goes right rename it to /boot/kernel while moving the old
> one to /boot/kernel.old.  Once you are sure that the kernel update is
> safe, you can proceed with userland updates.
>

I've performed source upgrades without incident before (which is
probably what I'll do here), but if the changes to the bce driver make
the interface less reliable (or locked, instead of reset), what can I
do to revert the system back? Is there a patch you can provide? It's a
production server, so it can't be down for very long.