Re: Misc problems with Lombard (serial, ethernet, SCSI)

* Serial drivers - At least when talking to the modem, it will occasionally
 cease to work.  I use pppd to connect, and when it disconnects I cannot
 reconnect.  Once this happens, anything that tries to open the port get
 an I/O error.  If I unload the serial module and then reload it, the
 problem goes away for a while.  This started happening around 2.2.15.

Dan Malek recently "ported" a workaround for a HW SCC bug which seem to
fix such problems. (The SCC get stuck sometimes when receiving certain
kinds of bad characters). I'll try to get that merged ASAP.

* MESH Driver - It won't work with my scanner.  The scanner works fine
 under MacOS and used to work under Linux x86.  It has problems with
 disconnects.  Also, once I use it then sleeping and awaking will locks up
 the machine.  Also, unloading the MESH module and reloading it locks up
 the machine.

Paul ? Any clue ? MESH is still a weird beast to me ;)

* Ethernet driver (BMAC) - The driver will occasionally lock up under heavy
 load (I haven't seen this yet with 2.2.17, though).  If I define an alias
 address, bringing down the alias address will also bring down the main
 address (this is still happening under 2.2.17).  Unloading the ethernet
 driver and loading it again causes a lockup.

I've not experieced that before, there are some known issues with bmac
(HW bugs uncovered by comments in Apple's Darwin source code) but AFAIK,
nothing that cause a kernel lockup.

I'm also seeing random lockups after long periods of running under
heavy load, but this is new and I'm thinking it may be a heat problem.
But just in case, I'll say it.

It may also be a RAM problem. Some Lombards are known to have memory
controller (or RAM, we don't know for sure) problems.
Also, which boot method are you using ?

I'm posting this to see if anyone is aware of these problems.  I'm
willing to work on them, but I don't want to duplicate work.  But I
would like to hear from the responsible parties for each driver to
know what to do.

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/