Question about bce driver

[Julian Elischer]

Tom Judge wrote:
> Julian Elischer wrote:
>> Tom Judge wrote:
>>> Josh Paetzel wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday 11 July 2007, Tom Judge wrote:
>>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> We have basically come to the same conclusion today,  unfortunately 
>>> this is 35 machines, but if it makes them stable at least we can use 
>>> them.
>>
>> I'm not seeing any problems on our 2950s running 6.1 plus some 
>> backpatches.
>>
> I am very surprised at that. The driver in 6.1 was un-usable in our 
> environment.

note "plus some backpatches". 
Doug Ambrisko moved us up to somewhere around 6.2


> 6.2 makes it usable with standard frames under moderate 
> load. However use jumbo frames and it all falls apart, and unfortunately
> the network these systems are plugged into is GigE only with a 8192 
> Jumbo mtu.
> 
> I have been trying to get some help with the problem for over a month 
> now without luck.   Firstly I was asked to enable some debugging in the 
> driver, this just uncovered what seems to be memory management bug in 
> the driver.  A patch was suggest for this but it did not solve the 
> problem.  Next I noticed the NetBSD guys had we written the offending 
> parts of code which I then ported to FreeBSD driver.  Still no luck, 
> although the problem was not as bad as before.  Then I took a look at 
> the OpenBSD driver, and it seems that they just completely disabled 
> jumbo frames as they are just so ropey.
> 
> If a patch was released today that fixed the problem then I may be able 
> to fully test the driver and not have to replace the NIC's. However I am 
> running out of time with deployment deadlines and I need this kit in 
> production by the latest mid next week.
> 
> Tom