Bug 292161

Summary:	Stalled Samba transfers on RealTek RTL8111/8168B gigabit NIC
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Mikkel Lauritsen <renard>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Kernel Maintainer List <kernel-maint>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	7
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	2.6.22.9-91.fc7	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2007-10-01 14:37:39 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 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-15 18:54:52 UTC

Running F7 on an Asus A2N-VM motherboard with a built-in RealTek RTL8111/8168B
gigabit NIC. 

When streaming files using Samba to a networked media player the transfer oftens
hangs. The client only reads data at a relatively low rate, and that might be
part of the reason why the bug is triggered. When transferring data to a laptop
computer I get 9.5 MB/s sustained on a 100 Mbit connection, so I don't think
there are any problems with the network hardware.

The problem occurs with the realtek 8169 driver in the 2.6.22.5-76.fc7 kernel,
samba 3.0.26a-0. Same kernel version but another NIC does not show the same
behavior.

To reproduce it I just need to start playing a song, causing the media player
to read a .FLAC file from the samba share. After a while the media player will
start dropping out and complaining that the transfer is stopped. netstat -t then
shows a large Send-Q for the samba connection.

So far only Samba is affected, and doing something else that exercises the
network interface (like running wireshark to dump the traffic) makes the problem
disappear.

Apparently the exact same problem is described in several other places:

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7555
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22/+bug/114171
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2007-January/128814.html
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2006-April/119726.html

Comment 1 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-17 19:45:10 UTC

Looking further at this, I haven't been able to reproduce the slowdowns with
other services than Samba.

Oh, and it's Asus M2A, not A2N. Not that it matters a lot :-)

Comment 2 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-21 10:26:24 UTC

Fixed by Francois Romieu?

http://www.mail-archive.com/netdev@vger.kernel.org/msg48351.html
http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.23-rc5/r8169-20070903/0002-r8169-workaround-against-ignored-TxPoll-writes-8168.patch

Comment 3 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-25 18:59:11 UTC

The link to a kernel bugzilla bug in the original bug here should probably be
replaced by

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7924

as this one is still open.

Comment 4 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-27 18:52:40 UTC

Replacing the 2.6.22.x r8169.ko module with one built from the 2.6.23-rc8 source
makes the problem disappear, and so far I have experienced no bad side effects.

Comment 5 Chuck Ebbert 2007-09-27 19:23:32 UTC

2.6.22.9 kernel with the two patches is in koji:

http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=19726

Comment 6 Chuck Ebbert 2007-09-28 17:42:45 UTC

In 2.6.22.9-91, in updates-testing soon.

Comment 7 Mikkel Lauritsen 2007-09-30 18:20:48 UTC

I have just tested, and 2.6.22.9-91 fixes the problem - many thanks.