bge panic (Re: Not panic in nfsd (Re: panic in nfsd on 6.2-RC1))

[Sven Willenberger]

On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 15:24 -0500, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 02:03:28PM -0500, Sven Willenberger wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 13:22 -0500, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 11:33:33AM -0500, Sven Willenberger wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > This is indicating a problem either with your bge hardware or the driver.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Kris
> > > > 
> > > > I suspect the driver: This same hardware setup was being used as a
> > > > databse server with FreeBSD 5.4. I had been using the bge driver but set
> > > > at base100T without any issue at all. It was when I did a clean install
> > > > of 6.2-Prerelease and setting bge to use the full gigE speed (via
> > > > autonegotiate) that these issues cropped up.
> > > 
> > > Be careful before you start blaming FreeBSD - since you did not test
> > > the failing hardware configuration in the older version of FreeBSD you
> > > cannot yet determine that it is a driver regression.
> > > 
> > > Kris
> > 
> > I will freely admit that this may be circumstantial, that the hardware
> > failed at the same time I upgraded to the newer version of FreeBSD. It
> > could also be that there is an issue with the bge driver being used with
> > 1000 (gigE) speeds instead of at fastE speeds as I used it with the 5.4
> > release (same hardware).
> 
> The latter is what I am referring to.  Your hardware may never have
> worked in gige mode due to your hardware being broken (yes, this
> happens), or it could be a freebsd driver issue either introduced in
> 6.x or present in 5.4 too.  You just haven't ruled these cases out.
> 
> Anyway, since you're happy with your present workaround we'll have to
> just drop the issue for now.
> 
> Kris

As the box in question is now fully production I can no longer "guinea
pig" it. However, I will attempt to set up a test bed with similar
hardware and try and push as much traffic through the bge interface at
gigE speeds as I can in an effort to duplicate this issue. If it does
crop up, this box should allow me to more effectively provide debugging
information as it will not be a production unit. Although the current
workaround is satisfactory for now (and to that extent I am "happy") I
would much rather have the available headroom of full gigE traffic to
this server so I would like to see if I can reproduce the error or at
least find out if it is a hardware issue (if nothing else than for my
own edification).

Sven