ral0 interface hangs with the message "No buffer space available"

[Gary Jennejohn]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:54:39 -0700
Yuri <yuri at rawbw.com> wrote:

> Almost every time when I leave system to download a large file I get ral 
> device inoperable after a while.
> Pinging the other peer causes these messages:
> 
>  > ping 192.168.0.1
> PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1): 56 data bytes
> ping: sendto: No buffer space available
> ping: sendto: No buffer space available
> 
> I don't believe that TCP buffer is legitimately filled up to the max 
> because after I bring it down and back up it works fine for a long 
> while. So why didn't this data go through before down/up?
> 
> If TCP connections are slow buffers shouldn't just fill up: system can 
> and should be preventing this letting apps to hold data streams.
> 
> Something isn't quite right.
> 
> Why would network device hang in a steady download scenaio?
> 
> 7.2-STABLE
> 

The buffers aren't full, it's the send queue used by whichever driver it is
which you are using.

The down/up frees it up because all queued transmits are discarded.

This should never happen in normal operation.

You haven't really provided any useful information to allow further analysis.

---
Gary Jennejohn