tg3 networking issue

Patrick fedora-list at puzzled.xs4all.nl
Mon Jul 17 19:16:59 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 11:43 -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 20:16 +0200, Patrick wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 11:03 -0500, Anthony Messina wrote:
> > > Patrick wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > > 
> > > > I recently updated to kernel 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 on my FC5 laptop. Not
> > > > sure if it's related but now networking stops working intermittently.
> > > > The driver used is tg3 for a Broadcom  BCM5789 nic. In /var/log/messages
> > > > I see:
> > > > 
> > > > NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
> > > > tg3: eth0: transmit timed out, resetting
> > > > tg3: tg3_stop_block timed out, ofs=2c00 enable_bit=2
> > > > tg3: eth0: Link is down.
> > > > tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex.
> > > > tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
> > > > 
> > > > Doing a $sudo /sbin/service network restart immediately solves the
> > > > problem. I only see this happen with the download of the FC5 Unity DVD
> > > > torrent. Not with small fish like surfing or getting my mail from an
> > > > imap server on the LAN. Has anyone seen something similar? Any
> > > > suggestions how I can pinpoint/fix this?
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > i had/have what sounds to be exactly the same problem.  see my post from
> > > april: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2006-April/msg04485.html
> > > 
> > > the problem seems to come and go.  i never found a solution and no one
> > > else seemed to be able to offer any advice at the time.
> > 
> > Yikes that does not sound very encouraging. Are you aware of an FC5
> > kernel where this problem does not happen (assuming it's related to the
> > tg3 module)?
> 
> I've never liked the tg3 module...it's always had issues with speed
> negotiation and the like.  One way around is to turn off negotiation on
> the switch/router and set it to fixed (along with the other appropriate
> parameters) and do the same for the machine itself.
> 
> If you're using the tg3 driver for a Broadcom chipset, try to use the
> actual Broadcom driver (from their website).  It doesn't have these
> issues.

Thanks for the info Rick. I downloaded the latest Broadcom tg3 driver
(version 3.58b) and README.TXT says that this driver is already part of
the recent 2.6 kernels:

"The latest driver is in the latest 2.6 Linux kernel. It can also be
downloaded from http://www.broadcom.com as a source package, but is
generally not necessary to do so if you are using the latest 2.6
upstream kernel from http://www.kernel.org or one of the latest
vendor kernels from Red Hat, SuSE, or others."

The info from # modinfo tg3 seems to agree as it says that the version
of the tg3 module in 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 is 3.59.

Is there perhaps a more recent beta driver you are referring to or are
you still saying it is a good idea to try this driver?

Thanks,
Patrick




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