em driver testing

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Hello!

On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 04:55:50AM +0800, ke han wrote:

> I have a Sun X4100 which uses Intel ethernet.  I would like to  
> install amd64 6.2beta3 on this server and put it through some tests.
> But I have no idea what tests to run or how to run them.
> Can someone provide some pointers?  I am happy to post my findings.

Put some CPU load on the machine, e.g. by running

cd /usr/src
sh
while true
do
	make -j4 buildworld
done >mk.log

on one terminal and then transfer some data to the system, e.g.
by fetch(1)ing via FTP from another box connected to the same
LAN. On all systems I have, there is no need to saturate the
Gbit-Link. 100 Mbit/s local connection will trigger the problem, too.

If the problem exists on your system, you will see emN - watchdog timeout
messages on the console and in /var/log/messages, followed by a
reset of the interface and a short and recoverable, but complete,
loss of connectivity. A couple of seconds, maybe. This is enough
to frustrate people, who e.g. run large backup jobs over a single
TCP connection that takes a couple of hours to complete - the interface
reset aborts the backup :-/

I must say that it seems to me, these guys are putting a hell of
a lot of effort into this problem and "we" are making progress.
Things look quite good to me for 6.2-RELEASE.

HTH,
Patrick
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