bcm4400 driver and Dell 8500

[James Nobis]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Kenneth D. Merry wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 08:40:25 +0100, Duncan Barclay wrote:
> > Hello James and Ken,
> >
> > Both of you are having real problems with the bcm driver and both of you
> > have a Dell 8500.
> >
> > This is James' dmesg output, which from memory looks very similar to your
> > Ken?
> >
> > > bcm0: <Broadcom 10/100 Base-T Ethernet> mem 0xfaffe000-0xfaffffff irq 11
> > > at device 0.0 on pci2
> > > bcm0: Ethernet address: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
> > > panic: bcm0: Strange type for core 0xffffffff
>
> Yep, the messages I get are identical when I load it as a module.
>
> > > I'm running 5.1-current from august 22nd.  I can try pulling down the
> > > latest 5.1 tommorow if you think this might help.  This is the same result
> > > as when I tried the driver from over a month ago.
> >
> > We think that the problem is something to do with the PCI configuration of
> > the machine. The ethernet address being ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff indicates that the
> > memory map is not right.
> >
> > > Before sending this email I was going to obtain a backtrace.  I recompiled
> > > with the symbol table and kernel debugger and now the driver appears to
> > > work fine.  Should it work this way?
> >
> > Hmm interesting. Ken can you try this and see if the driver then works?
>
> I've already got the kernel debugger on.  Do you mean changing the module
> compile somehow so that more symbols are included?  (It seems to resolve
> the function addresses in the module fine.)
>

compiling with options DDB and makeoptions DEBUG=-g is what i mean

> The stack trace from the module load is:
>
> panic()
> bcm_chip_get_core()
> bcm_chip_reset()
> bcm_attach()
> device_probe_and_attach()
> etc.
>
> If I boot a kernel with the bcm driver compiled in, and don't attach to the
> docking station, it comes up fine until I insert my fxp card in the carbus
> slot.  Then I get the panic in bcm_ring_rx_eof() that I reported last
> night.  FWIW, when I have the driver compiled in, the memory location is
> identical to location used when the module loads (above), but the ethernet
> address is properly decoded:
>
> bcm0: <Broadcom 10/100 Base-T Ethernet> mem 0xfaffe000-0xfaffffff irq 11 at device 0.0 on pci2
> bcm0: Ethernet address: 00:0b:db:94:bf:42
> miibus0: <MII bus> on bcm0
>
> If I boot a kernel with the bcm driver compiled in, and don't attach to the
> docking station, and don't insert my fxp card, I get slightly further.  I
> tried running dhclient, and got:
>
> All mbufs or mbuf clusters exhausted, please see tuning(7).
> bcm0: initialization failed: no memory for rx buffers
>
> Then I tried just manually ifconfiging the interface, and it works!
>
> Here's what netstat -m says:
>
> {erebor:/usr/home/ken:1:0} netstat -nm
> mbuf usage:
>         GEN cache:      0/0 (in use/in pool)
>         CPU #0 cache:   576/608 (in use/in pool)
>         Total:          576/608 (in use/in pool)
>         Mbuf cache high watermark: 512
>         Maximum possible: 34304
>         Allocated mbuf types:
>           576 mbufs allocated to data
>         1% of mbuf map consumed
> mbuf cluster usage:
>         GEN cache:      0/0 (in use/in pool)
>         CPU #0 cache:   575/584 (in use/in pool)
>         Total:          575/584 (in use/in pool)
>         Cluster cache high watermark: 128
>         Maximum possible: 17152
>         3% of cluster map consumed
> 1320 KBytes of wired memory reserved (98% in use)
> 1 requests for memory denied
> 0 requests for memory delayed
> 0 calls to protocol drain routines
>
> Performance, once I manually assigned an address seems okay; I was able to
> ftp a file over from another machine at a little over 11MB/sec.
>
> If I insert the fxp card after the bcm driver is configured, the cardbus
> initialization fails, and then I get the following messages over and over
> again:
>
> "eek j=6, macCurrent 511, con288"
>
> At that point I can 't even break into the debugger.
>
> That's all the time I have for tinkering with it this morning...
>
> Looks like things are working somewhat better, but there is still some
> weird stuff going on...
>
> Ken
> --
> Kenneth Merry
> ken at kdm.org
>
I don't have a docking station.  The built in ethernet is which uses the
bcm driver.  I only have used it as a module and have not tried otherwise.

-James