6.2-RELEASE em0 watchdog timeouts -- sometimes (w/ partial workaround)

[John Baldwin]

On Tuesday 16 January 2007 22:07, Jack Vogel wrote:
> On 1/16/07, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 10:53:04AM -0800, Jack Vogel wrote:
> > > There are some management related issues with this NIC, first if you
> > > have not done so make a DOS bootable device, and run this app I
> > > am enclosing, it fixes the prom setting that is wrong on some devices.
> > > It will do no harm, and it may solve things.
> >
> > Jack,
> >
> > Can you expand on what this application changes in the PROM?  I have
> > an Intel motherboard which suffers from similar to what the OP has
> > reported (em0 watchdog timeouts), and was curious what the utility
> > does before firing up the board and trying it.  Others may be curious
> > to know, too.
> 
> Hmmm, I'm rusty on this, its now been a year or more since I was
> first involved in the details, so I may need to amend this later :)
> 
> But from memory, the issue is the value programmed into the MANC
> register by the PROM, I don't remember what bit it was, but one bit
> is mistakenly set, it causes the hardware to incorrectly intercept some
> packets.
> 
> I was snowbound today, but I'll doublecheck on the detail tomorrow
> and amend if needed.
> 
> Everyone note that this ONLY effects an 82573 NIC, so make sure of
> that before anything else.

Is this the IPMI/ASF stuff?  If so, you can also work around it by adding
'net.inet.ip.portrange.lowlast=665' to /etc/sysctl.conf.

-- 
John Baldwin