[sclug] RTL8201 (Sis961) problem

[Jonathan H N Chin]

Pieter Claassen <pieter at openauth.co.uk> wrote:
> 2. It can make http connections to any machine on the local subnet, but =
> it  times out on large volumes of data.
> 3. Can sometimes make connections within the SP network, but mostly =
> times out.
> 4. I get collisions on the ifconfig (low amount), but sometimes I get =
> drops and sometimes the syslog tells me: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit =
> time out
> 6. It does get a DHCP address (but sometimes not)

Are you connected to a switch somewhere?
On Cisco, for example, portfast settings can affect machines
ability to talk on the network (modern pcs boot so fast that the
spanning tree checks haven't completed before the pc tries to use
the network). See, for example:

    http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/12.html


> I have no idea what is going on! Any suggestion on how to start to =
> address the problem?

Have you checked your logs thoroughly?
Is there anything other than the watchdog message?

Have you checked that your cables and connections are okay?
What happens if you swap machines around?

What network card are you using?
For example, eepro100 used to have problems under load.
Or, if you have a 3com vortex card, Documentation/networking/vortex.txt
in the kernel source tree has debugging suggestions.
Donald Becker has pages about ethernet drivers and diagnostic tools at:

    http://www.scyld.com/network/index.html
    http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html

Some general advise for debugging networking problems is available at:

    http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/lisa97/full_papers/17.urner/17_html/main.html

Plug keywords and the various messages you have seen into google and
see what it spits out.


-jonathan

-- 
Jonathan H N Chin, 1 dan | deputy computer | Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK
<jc254 at newton.cam.ac.uk> | systems mangler | tel/fax: +44 1223 335986/330508

                "respondeo etsi mutabor" --Rosenstock-Huessy