atheros driver under high load, panics and even more freezes

[Daniel Dvořák]

Ok, I will upgrade my boxes and I will do simple ping tests again.

Did you see my sysctl.conf file ?

I mean these options:

kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=2097152
net.inet.ip.fastforwarding=1
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=65536

Could be this connected with increasing latency up to 500ms ?

I tested this issue on another box, box of my friend, you know him too.

--- 10.27.128.13 ping statistics ---
10000 packets transmitted, 10000 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.932/1.101/9.657/0.433 ms

There is nice avg 1,1ms.

In his sysctl.conf, there are not these maxsockbuf, fastforwarding and sendscpace.
It is ironic, because it was he, who advised me these values.

You wrote me "look at memory usage with vmstat and/or netstat".

Ok, bud you did not told me what I should to search for ...

And I do not know how the command write with vmstat and netstat, there are many switches. :)

What to find ?

Thank you.

Daniel


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Leffler [mailto:sam at errno.com] 
> Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 6:00 AM
> To: dandee at volny.cz
> Cc: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org; current at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: atheros driver under high load, panics and even 
> more freezes
> 
> Daniel Dvoøák wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >  
> > first of all, I´m sorry maybe for my bad English.
> >  
> > We have 2 routers which I maintain in our mesh wireless 
> community network.
> >  
> > The Router 1 has 2 atheros adapters, ath0=wistron cm9, ath1=wistron 
> > cm10, of course some sisX, fxpX and so on.
> > The Router 2 has 1 atheros adapter, ath1=wistron CM10.
> >  
> > My R1 panics and even more it freezes very often. Maybe the 
> reason for 
> > panicing and freezing is the same and maybe not.
> >  
> > I started  (only after vmcore.5, so vmcore.6 is with this 
> option)  to 
> > use "option SW_WATCHDOG" in both my custom kernels on the R1 and R2 
> > recently in hope, it is some walkaround for freezing at 
> least if not for panicing.
> >  
> > This router was installed on the 1st of April 2006.
> >  
> > Statistics:
> >  
> > 9 panics with 8 kernel dumps, 1 missed
> >  
> > 10 freezes
> >  
> > I think that all panics some how connected to athX taskq 
> process, page 
> > fault in kernel panic and sbflush_locked.
> 
> Why?
> 
> >  
> > I guess that panic comes when router transmits and receives 
> datas at 
> > the maximum throughput for setted nominal media rate speed, exactly 
> > 24Mbps, more I do not use, because there are problems with quagga
> >  
> > ospfd packets, it is known issue.
> >  
> > Today I did a small test with throughput.
> >  
> > Router 1 executed this command:
> >  
> > # ping -i 0.001 -c 100000 -s 1472 ANY IP
> >  
> > As you see, it is not even flood ping, it is almost flood, 
> but not flood.
> >  
> > Throughput was about 1,13-1,2 MB/s as bmon showed me. I 
> notice there 
> > is not any qos and icmp.limit is so high net.inet.icmp.icmplim: 
> > 2147483647
> > net.ineticmp.icmplim_output: 0.
> > 
> >  
> > First 5 s latency was about 1,1-1,7 ms After it goes to 
> 10-30, 50-70, 
> > 110-130, 270-300, up 300ms and packet loss
> >  
> > .... some seconds ....
> >  
> > panic
> 
> 	<...lots of stuff deleted...>
> 
> Sounds like a resource leak to me.  You've got crash dumps, 
> look at memory usage with vmstat and/or netstat.  Past that 
> it sounds like you're running 6.1 RELEASE which is now 6+ 
> months old.  Many bugs have been fixed including, I believe, 
> some resource-related ones.  Please try 6-STABLE.
> 
> 	Sam
> 
>