network slowness/freez-up since update 10/11

[Bruce M Simpson]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 04:08:23AM +0400, Andrey Chernov wrote:
> > > Even with its locking mess it works perfectly in -current until late 
> > > August.
> > You mean, until rwatson changed the default to debug.mpsafenet=1? :-)
> Your guess is precisely right! :-)
> 
> (IMHO making such commit without testing major drivers such as if_de was 
> wrong step)

To be fair, de(4) is quite tangled and complex compared to other network
card drivers we have in the tree. As a result, it has had less maintenance
than the other drivers.

It's also for older hardware than dc(4) is able to support, or hardware
which is more common on a non-tier-one platform such as FreeBSD/alpha.

One solution I proposed (but haven't had time or hardware to follow up on)
is that the tlp(4) driver be ported from NetBSD, which would be a better
starting point for the locking work we need, as this driver supports
dc(4) and de(4)'s target hardware, and uses busdma, etc.

Bringing it under IFF_NEEDSGIANT is probably the right way to deal with
it for now.

Regards,
BMS
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