Re: tg3 driver upgrade (Linux 2.6.32 -> 3.2) breaks IBM Bladecenter SoL

"Michael Chan" [off-list ref] writes:

On Tue, 2012-10-02 at 14:07 +0200, Ferenc Wagner wrote:

quoted

I'm done with bisecting it: the first bad commit is:

commit dabc5c670d3f86d15ee4f42ab38ec5bd2682487d
Author: Matt Carlson [off-list ref]
Date:   Thu May 19 12:12:52 2011 +0000

    tg3: Move TSO_CAPABLE assignment
    
    This patch moves the code that asserts the TSO_CAPABLE flag closer to
    where the TSO capabilities flags are set.  There isn't a good enough
    reason for the code to be separated.
    
    Signed-off-by: Matt Carlson [off-list ref]
    Reviewed-by: Michael Chan [off-list ref]
    Signed-off-by: David S. Miller [off-list ref]

Thanks, I'll look into this.

Going into the opposite direction: I found that Linux 3.6 does not
permanently break the SoL console on upping eth0!  I'll try to find the
commit which (sort of) fixed it.

quoted

On the other hand, losing the SoL console even temporarily during boot
(as it happens with a minimal kernel before this commit) isn't nice
either.  I'll try to look after that, too, just mentioning it here... 

This is expected as the driver has to reset the link and you'll lose SoL
for a few seconds until link comes back up.  We can look into an
enhancement to not touch the link if it is already in a good state when
the driver comes up.

This looks more complicated here.  In our production setup under 2.6.32
(stock Debian squeeze system) the SoL console is not broken during boot
at all.  I don't say there are no dropouts at all, but the management
system does not detach the console, like it promptly did during the
bisection in every case.  I could not reproduce this (preferred)
behavior with self-built kernels yet (not even with 2.6.18, which also
worked fine when built by Debian, if I remember correctly.  I'll
continue investigating this issue.
-- 
Thanks,
Feri.

On Tue, 2012-10-02 at 18:49 +0200, Ferenc Wagner wrote:

Going into the opposite direction: I found that Linux 3.6 does not
permanently break the SoL console on upping eth0!  I'll try to find
the
commit which (sort of) fixed it.

These are the likely fixes:

commit cf9ecf4b631f649a964fa611f1a5e8874f2a76db 
Author: Matt Carlson [off-list ref]
Date: Mon Nov 28 09:41:03 2011 +0000

tg3: Fix TSO CAP for 5704 devs w / ASF enabled

commit 7196cd6c3d4863000ef88b09f34d6dd75610ec3e
Author: Matt Carlson [off-list ref]
Date: Thu May 19 16:02:44 2011 +0000

tg3: Add braces around 5906 workaround.