em0: watchdog timeout -- resetting (6.1-STABLE)

[Ronald Klop]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:06:08 +0200, David C. Myers <myers at aedifice.net>  
wrote:

>
>> watchdogs mean that the transmit ring is not being cleaned, so the
>> question is what is your machine doing at 100% cpu, if its that busy
>> the network watchdogs may just be a side effect and not the real
>> problem?
>
>
> I get them with a completely idle machine.  My home directory is mounted  
> via NFS (from FreeBSD 6.1 on an amd64 machine), and with the kernel from  
> earlier this week, the machine would just hang for 30 seconds to a  
> couple of minutes.  A slew of "watchdog timeout" messages would appear.  
>   Then I'd get a moment's responsiveness out of the machine, then  
> another long wait, then a moment's responsiveness, then a long wait...
>
> The machine would never recover from this cycle (at least, so far as I  
> was patient enough to wait).
>
> Going back to a kernel dated late July resolved everything.
>
> Someone else asked me for the hardware version of my em0 board...
>
>
> em0 at pci2:10:0:  class=0x020000 card=0x002e8086 chip=0x100e8086 rev=0x02  
> hdr=0x00    vendor   = 'Intel Corporation'
>      device   = '82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
>      class    = network
>      subclass = ethernet
>
>
> -David.

This sounds familiar to my problem. I solved it today by enabling polling.  
I know it's a workaround.

-- 
  Ronald Klop
  Amsterdam, The Netherlands