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Thread ID: 106554 2010-01-13 10:13:00 Question for the Linux gurus.... (PCI-E NIC causing all sorts of trouble) Agent_24 (57) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
848417 2010-01-16 00:33:00 Umm.. From the look of the dmesg you posted the system is getting tied up processing IRQ requests. Are you using the irqbalance daemon?

No idea, but system monitor does not show any process running called "irqbalance"


Also it looks like you are using APIC, have you tried adding the noapic and nolapic options to the kernel at boot?

If you boot up with the options mentioned above and then look at another dump of /proc/interrupts it will show a better indication of what is sharing with what.

I will reboot and try those options and post back very soon
Agent_24 (57)
848418 2010-01-16 00:41:00 OK, I tried with noapic, nolapic and Result:

(By the way, IOAPIC is enabled in BIOS.)


CPU0
0: 15479 XT-PIC-XT timer
1: 97 XT-PIC-XT i8042
2: 0 XT-PIC-XT cascade
4: 1 XT-PIC-XT
6: 4 XT-PIC-XT floppy
7: 1625 XT-PIC-XT ohci_hcd:usb3, ohci_hcd:usb4, HDA Intel
8: 0 XT-PIC-XT rtc0
9: 0 XT-PIC-XT acpi
10: 7570 XT-PIC-XT ahci, ohci_hcd:usb5, ohci_hcd:usb6, ohci_hcd:usb7, ohci1394, nvidia
11: 8320 XT-PIC-XT ehci_hcd:usb1, ehci_hcd:usb2, eth0, eth1
14: 1380 XT-PIC-XT pata_atiixp
15: 0 XT-PIC-XT pata_atiixp
NMI: 0 Non-maskable interrupts
LOC: 0 Local timer interrupts
SPU: 0 Spurious interrupts
CNT: 0 Performance counter interrupts
PND: 0 Performance pending work
RES: 0 Rescheduling interrupts
CAL: 0 Function call interrupts
TLB: 0 TLB shootdowns
TRM: 0 Thermal event interrupts
THR: 0 Threshold APIC interrupts
MCE: 0 Machine check exceptions
MCP: 1 Machine check polls
ERR: 1
MIS: 0

With the noapic and nolapic options, the system hard locks instantly when the VIA card tries to go into Gigabit mode.
Agent_24 (57)
848419 2010-01-16 01:39:00 Ok, that is very interesting it looks like both network devices are sharing the same physical IRQ. Can you try moving the card to another slot?

I would suspect that the network card is generating allot more interrupts in gigabit mode and it is colliding with one of the other devices it is sharing with. This would explain the same behaviour when running under windows. Do you have any devices connected to the USB ports, like keyboard or mouse? try moving them to another USB port to see if that helps.

The irqbalance daemon is designed to help with distributing the servicing of IRQs across multi cpu systems and can help with the deadlock issue that was showing up in your dmesg output.

One other thing that can cause the problem you are having is if the system does not set the trigger level for the IRQ line correctly, i.e. edge vs level triggering. If this is the case then it is normally caused by faulty BIOS and/or drivers.

Next to trying another known working card it is hard to say if the fault is the mother board or network card. The total deadlock with APIC disabled would suggest the system was tied up in an IRQ service loop, which would suggest there is an issue with the network card or its driver. It would seem that the IRQ load with 100Mb is not enough to cause any collisions or contention issues, which would explain why it works OK.

I once spent nearly a week trying to get a SCSI card working correctly on a system that was having the type of problems you are having. In the end a got a better SCSI card, that must have had better written drivers, and the problem went away.
ughnz (8297)
848420 2010-01-16 04:50:00 I tried a different slot but still the same problem, but I didn't check IRQ, I didn't bother, since it didn't work.

I changed it out for a D-Link DGE-530T which works fine, but the problem is that it's PCI not PCI-E, so I don't know if that's why it works or not.

As I said before, the VIA card does seem to have issues on my old nForce 4 board (MSI K8N SLI-FI) as well. However that board also has onboard Realtek LAN and Realtek Audio. I don't have anything else with PCI-E slots to test it in.

I will do a more thorough test on the nForce 4 board and see what happens.

On another note, I think I have noticed a different problem with my tuner card and the 790GX-G65... :groan:
Agent_24 (57)
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