Very bad Realtek problems

[Yonghyeon PYUN]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 01:01:26PM -0400, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 10:46:30AM +0900, Yonghyeon PYUN wrote:
> 
> > Given that you can reliably reproduce the issue, let's check simple ones
> > first.
> 
> Just as a quick update, I couldn't tolerate the network outages any more as
> they were impacting my work, so I bought an Intel NIC. That said, this will
> actually free me up to do more debugging of the Realtek as soon as I get a
> chance to finish setting up a small test network - I'll be able to look at
> both sides of interactions instead of depending on the flaky interface.
> 

Ok, if you happen to find spare time on testing, let me know your
findings.

> 
> > If you think the issue intermittently happens regardless of network load,
> > try attached patch. I'm not sure whether the patch makes any difference for
> > you since many PCIe NICs don't implement CLKREQ feature. It's just a wild
> > guess.
> 
> This is an onboard NIC, for what it's worth, on my:
> 

Yes, it's very common to see LOM version in these days.

> Base Board Information
>         Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
>         Product Name: M4A88T-M
>         Version: Rev X.0x
> 
> I'm not sure if that changes it as compared with a plug-in PCIe device. Just
> mentioning it for completeness.

There is no much difference for driver between LOM and standalone
NIC.  LOM version may have some modifications compared to
engineering samples I have.  And motherboard vendors are free to
program EEPROM/FLASH of NIC to meet their needs.  I don't think the
motherboard vendor heavily changed the NIC configuration though.