4.8-RELEASE w/2 NICs
Daniel Bye
dan at slightlystrange.org
Fri Jun 13 09:17:26 PDT 2003
Hi all,
I have just installed 4.8-RELEASE on a system using an Asus A7N266-VM mobo,
in a 2U case.
It has three PCI slots, but because of the low form factor, we need to use a
riser board from one of them, so that PCI cards can be added on the correct
axis.
The integrated NIC on the mobo is based on the RealTek 8201, which I know is
not supported under 4.8-RELEASE, but the box must have two network cards (it
is eventually going to be a VPN end-point). Now, the only way to get two
additional NICs in the machine is to connect them both to the riser-board.
One of them, a VIA card, works fine. The other, a NetGear FX310, doesn't
work - it is detected by the OS - dmesg shows the correct values for miibus0
and miibus1, but all I get from it is dc0: watchdog timeout.
I have checked the man page for the dc driver, and know this message is
generated when the device cannot deliver interrupts, or if there is a
problem with the network setup. I can discount the latter - the VIA vr0
interface works fine on the same cables and network segment.
Which leaves the interrupts - this is what the BIOS shows for the two cards
in question:
Bus Dev no. Vendor ID Dev ID IRQ
1 6 1106 3106 5 <--- VIA (vr0)
1 8 11ad 0002 5 <--- NetGear (dc0)
Unfortunately, the BIOS isn't clever enough to let me change the IRQ on a
per-device basis, only per-slot - which is no good, as the two cards are
connected to the same slot. I have tried starting the machine with the
cards reversed, in which case the device at dev no 8 still generates
watchdog timeout messages, and I have tried both cards on their own in each
slot - when connected to the dev no 6 slot on the riser, both work. When
connected to dev no 8 on the riser, both fail.
The riser is a plotech, which sits in slot 2, and has a ribbon connector to
a card in slot 0. Removing the card in slot 0 and disconnecting the ribbon
makes the machine sing a very unattractive tune! (That was a long shot
anyway, borne of increasing frustration - I told my boss I could have the
thing migrated from SuSE to FreeBSD by the end of the day. Ho hum...)
Is this setup ever going to work? Can I somehow set one of the cards to use
a different IRQ? I am not a hardware expert, and have never come across
this problem before.
If not, then I guess it's back to Linux, as it's able to use the integrated
8201 ethernet controller. At least I can use Debian, and move the rest of
the guys here away from SuSE...
Any thoughts or tips on this most welcome.
Thanks,
Dan
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Daniel Bye
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