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
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?
Andy- Yes, I should be able to try this out! Phil
Test kernels are available here: http://people.redhat.com/agospoda/#rhel4 Please test them and report back to this BZ.
OK I have installed 2.6.9-45.EL.gtest.9smp this morning - currently running without problems. Phil
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
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
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.
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.
committed in stream U6 build 55.11. A test kernel with this patch is available from http://people.redhat.com/~jbaron/rhel4/
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