Description of problem: There is a bug in the bnx2 driver that causes a kernel panic when the TX buffer gets full. http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/davem/net-2.6.git;a=commit;h=faac9c4b753f420c02bdce0785d2657087830a12 It was fixed in version 1.5.2 of the module. Centos 5.0 is using 1.4.44-1. 1.5.2 was released about a year ago according to the developer. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Very easy under Xen, somewhat easy not under xen. Steps to Reproduce: 1. mount server:/share /mnt 2. cd /mnt 3. cat file1_1gb file2_1gb > file3 Actual results: with xen it crashes 50% of the time or more, without xen it crashes 5-50% of the time. Expected results: Additional info: RHEL 5.1 has 1.5.11 which has the bug fixed, but the problem is pretty serious in my work environment and it should probably be backported to all supported RHEL versions.
I intended to say RHEL 5.0 is using 1.4.44-1, not Centos.
Have you tried a 5.1 kernel? (Maybe not if using CentOS since they haven't rebuilt everything yet). Feel free to try my test kernels here if you like, but this issue was resolved quite a while ago and appears in any kernel version after 2.6.18-28.el5. My test kernels are here: http://people.redhat.com/agospoda/#rhel5 Please re-open if an updated kernel does not resolve this and please report any issues you find while running my test kernels directly to me. The more testing the better!