Question about bce driver

[Tom Judge]

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