Possible problems with Broadcom BCM5704C 10/100/1000 on TyanThunder K8S pro S2882 twin Operteron

[Sven Willenberger]

On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 12:56 +0000, Alan Jay wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago we reported a potential problem with the Broadcom
> BCM5704C 10/100/1000 onboard Ethernet (being used in Gigabit mode) controller
> on the Tyan Thunder pro S2882 with twin Operteron and 8Gb of RAM.	
> 
> The system was running a three databases using mySQL - the first database ran
> fine but the others when hit hard caused the server to crash in what appeared
> to be a memory / Ethernet controller error.
> 
> We have now done the first phase of some tests and thought we would report
> back. 
> 
> We switched off the broadcom Ethernet controller (via software) and routed all
> traffic via the boards Intel 10/000 Ethernet connection.  One of the problem
> databases has now been running for a few days and so far has been ok.
> 
> We will be doing some more tests over the next few days but this seems to be
> pointing to some issues with the driver for the Broadcom Ethernet Chipset.  
> 

I would be interested in hearing how that works. We too just got an
S2882 with dual opteron and 8 G RAM running postgresql server. We
actually had the issue with the onboard intel ethernet (fxp) locking up
on us (rather than the broadcom) and locking whatever program was trying
to use this (noticed during a cvsup). So far the broadcom has been
running fine, but we have not been running intense traffic through it
yet.

Sven