intermittent network hang on geode when idle

[tritius at rogers.com]

> 
> From: Soren Kristensen <soren at soekris.com>
> Date: 2003/08/21 Thu PM 02:56:56 EDT
> To: tritius at rogers.com
> CC: freebsd-small at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: intermittent network hang on geode when idle
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> Have you looked at Power Management ? The Geode VSA code is always 
> active and have a lot of power mangement that run *above* everything 
> else.... Maybe check if your hardware's BIOS has some controls.
>

I hadn't looked at power management previously, but after getting the relevant information from the board manufacturer, this was indeed the case. The board was going to sleep after 20 minutes until the serial port awakened it.
 
It was never noticed before, because the PC-Card, or other functions of the device were not setting it into idle mode. Only when sitting on a table doing nothing but waiting for a test did this problem occur.


> As a note, I do have the Geode VSA on the net4801, but I did a custom 
> build without any power management....


Thank you very much for your idea. It was dead on.

Mike


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