[Discussion] Re: web100 chokes network activity under 2.6.15

[Maurice Volaski <mvolaski@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Hi Maurice;
>
> What version is the Gentoo kernel?  Do you get the same poor 
> performance with an unpatched vanilla 2.6.15 kernel?  What type of 
> NIC are you using?

I am using the unpatched vanilla kernel, NOT a Gentoo kernel.

The performance isn't poor. It stops outright.

The NIC is an Intel using a 82543GC Gigabit Ethernet Controller. It 
uses the e1000 driver. Both the switch and the card are forced to 100 
Mbit full-duplex.

> so I upgraded to 2.6.15, same problem.  I got mad and copied the 
> e100.c file from the 2.6.12 tree into the drivers/net directory 
> replacing the 2.6.15 version and rebuilt the modules.  This fixed my 
> problem.
>
> Looking at the e100.c NIC driver source files I noticed that the .15 
> version was much larger than the .12 version.  I think they did 
> something with the NAPI polling functions, and going back to the old 
> version seems to help.  I've had other reports of problems and at 
> least one case they were using the Intel NIC (e100.c) and replacing 
> the source file with an old version solved the problem.

It sounds reasonable to assume whatever change was made here may have 
also been made to the Gigabit version of that NIC. I suppose I could 
replace the whole e1000 folder. I could also try other NICs. I'll let 
you know.
--

Maurice Volaski, mvolaski@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Computing Support, Rose F. Kennedy Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University

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