Intel NIC ARP problem

[Jack Vogel]

So, distilling down the data, the problem is booting from
FreeBSD into Windows, right?

The underlying problem is that the management system
is eatting the ARP I believe. It looks like my driver does
not clean up something properly on exit, hmmm, I'll have
to look into it Ivan. Thanks for the report.

Jack

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 5:52 AM, Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org> wrote:
> I have a strange problem with a PRO/1000 EB NIC (card=0x109615d9
> chip=0x10968086) built into the motherboard (5000X chipset) that manifests
> itself in NIC stopping responding to ARP packets requesting its
> address while in Windows XP, after being rebooted from FreeBSD
> (dual-boot).
>
> The sequence is:
>
> ** cold boot (after the power has been disconnected from the PSU) into
> WinXP: NIC works on WinXP
> ** reboot into FreeBSD: NIC works
> ** reboot into WinXP: NIC doesn't respond to ARP
> ** reboot into FreeBSD: NIC works
> ** reboot into WinXP: NIC doesn't respond to ARP
> ** cold boot into WinXP: NIC starts working again
>
> I found the cold boot resolution by searching the net, apparently it's
> a semi-known problem:
> http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=7837 - my
> motherboard isn't the one mentioned on this page but they share the
> same chipset (Intel 5000X - this is a Xeon-based workstation).
>
> I confirmed that it's an ARP issue by two things:
>
> - computers with a large ARP timeout can access the machine while
> the ARP entry is cached at their side
> - connecting a laptop via crossover to the machine and using arping
> clearly shows that ARP is responding until reboot from FreeBSD to
> WinXP.
>
> This is a workstation for developing and testing cross-platform
> software so rebooting between operating systems is common. Any ideas?
>
> Software involved:
>
> - FreeBSD 8-CURRENT amd64
> - WinXP SP3 i386
> - For WinXP, tried both the drivers from the motherboard maker (12.4)
> and the newest available on Intel's web site (13.2.8)
>
> dmesg, etc. are available.
>
>