em(4) on FreeBSD is sometimes annoying

[Royce Williams]

Jack Vogel wrote, on 8/4/2008 9:54 AM:
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Royce Williams <royce at alaska.net> wrote:
>> Jack Vogel wrote, on 8/4/2008 9:18 AM:
>>> The focus here on the laptop distracted me, but someone else at work
>>> reminded me. Its very important that you run the EEPROM fix for
>>> the 82573 that i posted a long while back, search in email archive
>>> for it. Its a DOS executable that will patch your EEPROM.
>>>
>>> I am not sure if the Lenova's need it, but get it, run it, and then
>>> see if your problem goes away.
>> Martin, there's also a link to it from Jeremy's "Commonly Reported
>> Issues" page:
>>
>> http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues
>>
>> Look for "DOS-based EEPROM".
>>
>>
>> Jack, is this issue the same one that is documented here?
>>
>> http://e1000.sourceforge.net/doku.php?id=known_issues#v_l_e_tx_unit_hang_messages
>>
>>
>> ... and addressed by this script?
>>
>> http://e1000.sourceforge.net/doku.php?id=tx_unit_hang
>>
>>
>> If so, the script could be used without booting from a DOS disk.  If
>> this is unrelated or is an unsafe way to apply this fix, that would be
>> handy to know.

> Thanks for the pointer Royce, and yes that's the issue, and if you 
> want to boot Linux and use that instead of DOS then more power to 
> you.

Excellent!  For some folks, booting from a Knoppix or Ubuntu CD 
might be easier than trying to gen up a DOS-bootable USB key.  I
think that recent Knoppix and Ubuntu include ethtool out of the box.

Point of clarity: the script that I linked to above is to test/invoke 
the problem, not to "address" it.  Below is the script that calls 
ethtool to change the actual bits:

http://e1000.sourceforge.net/files/fixeep-82573-dspd.sh

 
Royce


-- 
Royce D. Williams                                   - http://royce.ws/
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well. -A.Adler