Deja Vu all over again

John F. Kohler jkohler2 at earthlink.net
Mon Apr 2 20:38:17 PDT 2001



ME wrote:

> On Sun, 1 Apr 2001, John F. Kohler wrote:
> > I just ran the utility "Mac TCP Watcher" during dinner. it sent 1580
> > pings, and 1183 (74%) were returned.  397 (25%) were lost. Minimum
> > transit time was .01 seconds, average .08 seconds and maximum was .11
> > seconds.  I watched the pings go out in groups of 10 before the window
> > would refresh and 3 or 4 packets out of 10 (on average) would record
> > "echo timed out."  Strange, because it was only going 50 feet to the
> > router, and 50 feet back to the machine on the same desk. Next I set
> > the Linux box to ping the Mac LC.  51 packets transmitted 40 packets
> > received. 21% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/mdev
> > =1.609/1.762/4.853/0.51 ms
>
> The above test combined wih the tests done on the linux box and the
> inconsistent behavior based on length of time it is operational
> (suggestion of heat/expasion or heat/damage) all point more to hardware
> problem instead of software error.

That conclusion was just proved to be correct.

>
>
> If you can get them to replace the "new" card and then configure a
> replacement "new" card to use the same settings as the "old" card, and
> notice the same problems, then odds are that the problem lies in the way
> the linux kernel talks to the card.

I did, in fact, return the "old" card (Accton NE2000 ISA) card to the ISA
slot to my "new" computer, the AMD-K6 (400mhz) machine with the
40 gig hard drive.

Because I could boot the computer with a DOS/Windows 9x floppy, I was also
able to load the DOS floppy that could display the settings as well as change
them.  I turned off the Plug N Play feature, and set the IRQ to 10 and i/o
port
to 0x240.  Next, I installed the "old" RH 6.2 which had worked so long in
the smaller older pentium -200.  I used "netconf & " to set linux to IRQ 10
and i/o port 0x240.

I did not do any pinging but when /sbin/ifconfig showed "eth0" up and running,

I simply started Netscape, and the default URL popped up right away on the
screen.

My ISP states that my upload/download  data rates can be as high as 1500/128
kbps.
from "www.dslreports.com" I learned 363/104 kbps was what I really was
getting.

It is still better than the best modem I have (14.4kbps)

>
>
> Some other things to try for hardware issues: What yuo describe above can
> also happen when you have an IRQ or IOport conflict. I know that
> /proc/interrupts and /proc/ioports do not show any devices with the same
> resources, it is still possibe that you have another device that is trying
> to use the same IRQ 10 and io port (whatever), but were not found by the
> kernel or reported during startup. You might want to try doing a "cat
> /proc/interrupts" and seeing what *other* IRQs are free and then try to
> use the software that came with the new ethernert card to choose another
> IRQ other than 10 and another ip-port that is not in use, but not the
> present io-port.
>
> > I have asked my son in Cotati to download a good copy of the Vendor setup
> > disk and send it to me.
>
> This will be good for trying out the old card with RH 7 on your new
> computer.
>

I am considering re-installing RH 7 using the "upgrade" option of the install
process.
(but not for a while).


>
> > > As another option, you can look into making your old ethernet card work
> > > with an installation of RedHat and then add the "new" card and have 2
> > > ethernet cards in your box. From there, you can at least test one and
> > > diconnect the other one during testing.
> >
> > Would one be identified as eth1 and the other eth0?
>
> Precisely. You can also then specify which one you want to be 1 and which
> one you want to be 0 in lilo.conf with an append directive. (I can walk
> you through this and point you to the docs that can help with it. It is
> not very complicated, but I don't want to detail that unless that is a
> path you ish to travel.)
>
> (from other e-mail included here now...)
>
> > One more thought... What if I installed Red Hat 6.2 in my AMD k6
> > computer (because it ran so long and well in the older pentium) and was
> > successful?
>
> If the problem is a hardware one, this won't fix it. If it is a matter of
> code maturity for the parts of the kernel that deal with your NIC
> interface, then an earlier kernnel won't likely help either. I would not
> put this high on my list of things to test first, but if you feel
> like an adventure, then it can be a learning experience. to try it.
>
> Regression to the earlier NIC will probably work fine in RH6 and
> RH7. Reinstallation with both cards is also an option.
>
> > Would that not point to flaws in Red hat 7.0 in areas other
> > than the kernel?  Or, could the kernel in 7.0 be unreliable.
>
> If it is a software issue (not so likely based on what we have so far)
> then it could/would be how the kernel/module-inserted-into-the- -kernel
> tries to speak to your hardware. Though it is *possibe* RH may have
> tampered with (err "improved") the parts of the kernel that deal with your
> NIC, it seems unlikely. I suspect the same kernel in another distro would
> also have the same problems.
>
> > The rumour was at the time of the 7.0 release that Red Hat
> > rushed the software before
> > it was fully checked by the many Linux users over the
> > planet,  particularly up for
> > criticism was the "C" compiler and some security flaws in
> > the code.
>
> Security flaws have been an issue with RH for a while. The compiler issue
> should not affect us in this place though.

Once again, ***Thank You*** for all your help on this issue.

John




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