Atheros AR8131 Ethernet hangs shutdown

[CyberLeo Kitsana]

On 06/07/2010 08:03 AM, Warren Block wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Jun 2010, CyberLeo Kitsana wrote:
> 
>> I recently had the chance to play with a Foxconn NetBox-nT330i. It's
>> based off an Atom 330 CPU and an nForce MCP79 chipset. All aspects of
>> this device appear to function quite well with 8.1-BETA1, and it's
>> diminutive stature is quite cute.
>>
>> The only issue I have encountered with it thus far is a seeming
>> propensity for it to lock up on shutdown or reboot if the Atheros AR8131
>> ethernet adapter is not connected to anything. It gets as far as
>> displaying the 'Uptime' line, then hangs; however, when connected, it
>> will display the uptime message, then indicate that the alc0 interface
>> is going UP and DOWN, then continue.
> 
> If it's like the alc setup on an Acer Aspire One D250, the 10/100 alc
> chip is used with a 10/100/1000 Atheros PHY.  Don't remember the exact
> symptoms, but it only worked right after manually setting the media to
> 100baseTX.  That was on a gigabit network, but might also help with no
> cable connected.
> 
> Rebuilding the kernel without the alc device ought to also work, but is
> less elegant.

I'm fairly certain it's gigabit the whole way, as I get transfer rates
greater than 12 megabytes per second. Unfortunately, forcing the phy to
100baseTX/full-duplex does not alter the symptoms at all, and just makes
transfers slower.

On one of the tests, issuing a shutdown -p after unplugging the ethernet
cord caused it to panic and reboot at the point it usually freezes, and
thereafter freeze during startup when running netif; I wasn't able to
copy down the panic info, though, as the reboot happened within half a
second. Alas, this box lacks obvious serial ports.

I may investigate building the kernel without the alc device, though,
and see if unloading the kld prior to shutdown allows the system to
continue past that point.

Thanks for the suggestions!

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