Bug 226308

Summary:	natsemi ethernet controller periodically freezes
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4	Reporter:	phil <junkmail>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Andy Gospodarek <agospoda>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	4.0	CC:	jbaron, peterm
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	RHBA-2007-0791	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2007-11-15 16:19:11 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description phil 2007-01-31 20:42:03 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

Description of problem:
periodically my 2nd NIC (a natsemi ethernet card) locks up - a "service network restart" is needed to get it going again.

just before this happens, the following message appears in /var/log/messages

eth1: Oversized(?) Ethernet frame spanned multiple buffers, entry 0x3df74a status 0xd00005f2.

i have a busy server where this happens once or twice a day.

my eth1 reports as following in dmesg

natsemi eth1: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xddedf000 (0000:03:0d.0), 00:09:5b:e1:8c:97, IRQ 225, port TP.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kernel-2.6.9-42.0.8

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. switch server on
2. wait until 'Oversized(?) Ethernet frame spanned multiple buffers' appears in /var/log/messages
3. observe fault

Actual Results:
the ethernet controller will have locked up, making my web site unavailable

Expected Results:
nothing

Additional info:
i am concerned that this is a bug in the natsemi ethernet driver, having found the following on the web. can someone perhaps check this fix did actually make it into the current rhel4 kernel???

Natsemi oversized packet lockup
Friday, February 10th, 2006

If you're having trouble with a natsemi ethernet controller locked up in Linux after complaining about oversized ethernet frames like this:

Oversized(?) Ethernet frame spanned multiple buffers, entry 0x00ba8b status 0xe0000bd5.

then this patch (or a kernel version which includes it; 2.6.16 or later should) may be useful. The patch is against 2.6.9+ versions of natsemi with NAPI support but doesn't use the NAPI support.

http://www.sirena.org.uk/~broonie/natsemi-rx-lockup-fix.patch

Comment 1 Andy Gospodarek 2007-02-01 04:19:42 UTC

That patch is not currently included in RHEL4.  I will probably build a RHEL4
test kernel that includes that patch in the next couple of days and will post
here when complete.  

Will you be able to install it and test it on your system reasonably soon?

Comment 2 phil 2007-02-01 07:39:48 UTC

Andy-

Yes, I should be able to try this out!

Phil

Comment 3 Andy Gospodarek 2007-02-01 22:04:08 UTC

Test kernels are available here:

http://people.redhat.com/agospoda/#rhel4

Please test them and report back to this BZ.

Comment 4 phil 2007-02-02 11:24:57 UTC

OK I have installed 2.6.9-45.EL.gtest.9smp this morning - currently running
without problems.

Phil

Comment 6 Andy Gospodarek 2007-02-06 15:25:05 UTC

Phil,

Please let me know if you see these hangs with the new kernel.  If not I will
try and push this patch into a future release.  

Thanks for sending it to us.

-andy

Comment 7 phil 2007-02-07 10:18:59 UTC

No problems so far - the server has been running fine since 2007-02-02 06:24
EST, so I'm pretty sure this is an improvement.

Phil

Comment 9 RHEL Program Management 2007-04-12 14:47:31 UTC

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

Comment 11 RHEL Program Management 2007-04-30 19:01:54 UTC

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Kernel Team for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release, and has moved to bugzilla 
status POST.

Comment 12 Jason Baron 2007-06-22 14:24:58 UTC

committed in stream U6 build 55.11. A test kernel with this patch is available
from http://people.redhat.com/~jbaron/rhel4/

Comment 15 errata-xmlrpc 2007-11-15 16:19:11 UTC

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2007-0791.html