-----Original Message-----
From: Jarek Poplawski [mailto:jarkao2@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 3:20 AM
To: Caleb Cushing
Cc: e1000-devel@lists.sourceforge.net; netdev@vger.kernel.org; Frans Pop;
Brandeburg, Jesse; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Andi Kleen; Kirsher,
Jeffrey T
Subject: Re: [E1000-devel] large packet loss take2 2.6.31.x

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 01:17:09AM -0500, Caleb Cushing wrote:

quoted

quoted

Btw, currently I don't consider this dropping means there has to be
a bug. It could be otherwise - a feature... e.g. when a new kernel
can transmit faster (then dropping in some other, slower place can
happen).

um... where would it be dropping that we wouldn't have a bug? I mean
sure faster is great... but if it makes my network not work right...

E.g. if it were dropped because of a queue overflow (but it doesn't
seem to be the case, at least at your box) or because of memory
problems while handling a lot of traffic.

quoted

I've added all (I think) information you've asked for to the bug
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13835 except for ethtool
and netstat on the router side. ethtool complains about not having
driver or capability (maybe because it's a 2.4 kernel?) and the
version of netstat doesn't support -s. I disabled everything that I
can think of that would send/receive packets before doing the test
client side, except dhcp/dns windows box's were probably sending some
broadcasts too. but the traffic should be pretty low. I did remember
to set the txqueuelen didn't seem to make a difference

Alas it's not all information I asked. E.g. "netstat -s before faulty
kernel" and "netstat -s after faulty kernel" seem to be the same file:
netstat_after.slave4.log.gz. Anyway, since there are problems with
getting stats from the router we still can't compare them, or check
for the dropped stats. (Btw, could you check for /proc/net/softnet_stat
yet?)

So, it might be the kernel problem you reported, but there is not
enough data to prove it. Then my proposal is to try to repeat this
problem in more "testing friendly" conditions - preferably against
some other, more up-to-date linux box, if possible?

quoted

only error in dmesg I see is

e1000e 0000:00:19.0: pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting failed 0xfffffffb

I added e1000e maintainers to CC to have a look at this warning.

Jarek P.

The "pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting failed" message is a non-fatal warning that has recently been removed.