watchdog question.

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Bill Moran wrote:

>RW <list-freebsd-2004 at morbius.sent.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>On Tuesday 01 August 2006 20:39, Efren Bravo wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I've a freeBSD box and I've been seeing this
>>>message for several months: sis0 watchdog
>>>timeout.
>>>
>>>The box has two ethernet cards, sis0 (100mb) and
>>>vr0 (10mb).
>>>
>>>The messages isn't frequent but yesterday it got
>>>my attention. What does this mean?
>>>      
>>>
>>from  sis(4)
>>     sis%d: watchdog timeout  The device has stopped responding to the net-
>>     work, or there is a problem with the network connection (e.g. a cable
>>     fault).
>>    
>>
>
>I've seen this frequently with sis cards.  My opinion is that all sis
>cards are cheapo crap, and watchdog timer is a workaround to try to make
>them work in spite of being crap.  I've seen sis cards in Windows machines
>and they perform lousy there as well.
>  
>
I always got these errors on sis cards too - always ignored then.  
Worked fine for me on a lightly loaded network.

If you start getting real symptoms - card locking up for example - then 
you;ll have to get a better network card.  But unless and until that 
happens I would ignore it.

--Alex