--On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:30:21 -0500 Josh Paetzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
On Wednesday 11 July 2007, Tom Judge wrote:
Paul Schmehl wrote:
> I'm running 6.1 RELEASE (i386) and I've been replacing the
> if_bce.c file with a slightly newer one that at least got the
> driver working without hard lockups that required a reboot to
> fix. (Rather problematic on a remotely located web server.)
>
> If I download the latest driver from cvs (1.33), should I also
> replace the if_bcefw.h and if_bcereg.h files with the newer
> versions? Will the NIC work without creating new problems?
> Right now I get an occasional "flapping" of the NIC link state
> (down, up , down, up, etc.) but it at least works most of the
> time. I don't want to buildworld and get suprised by a
> non-functioning NIC. :-)
>
> If I use the newer versions, will I also need to use some other
> newer files that are called by them? Or would it be better to
> upgrade the entire box to 6.2?
>
> FreeBSD www.stovebolt.com 6.1-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p10
> # 2:
>
> grep bce /var/run/dmesg.boot
> bce0: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
> 0xf4000000-0xf5ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci9
> bce0: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
> miibus0: <MII bus> on bce0
> bce0: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ad
> bce1: <Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B1), v0.9.6> mem
> 0xf8000000-0xf9ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci5
> bce1: ASIC ID 0x57081010; Revision (B1); PCI-X 64-bit 133MHz
> miibus1: <MII bus> on bce1
> bce1: Ethernet address: 00:13:72:fb:2a:ab
Hi Paul,
From the testing that I have been doing for the last few months
the driver in 6.2 is stable if you are not using jumbo frames and
there is a light-moderate network load.
However if you want to use Jumbo frames the driver is very
unstable. I posted a patch against 6.2 which should fix some load
based issues in the driver with standard frame sizes.
Tom
Paul, I was never able to solve the link up/link down problems with
the driver....I was using the drivers from STABLE for a while, and
without jumbo frames everything worked somewhat ok most of the
time....the ultimate solution was to just get the intel PCI-X card
and stop using the broadcoms.
Ouch! So even updating to the latest driver doesn't solve the link state
issue? I don't use jumbo frames, but it's critical that this server remain
in service 24/7, so I don't want to upgrade if there's no improvement in
that issue. Switching to the Intel card would be a bit of a PITA on a
remote, rack-mount server. :-(
--
Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/
