#180: ASRock E350M1 Gigabit Ethernet Problem

[coreboot]

#180: ASRock E350M1 Gigabit Ethernet Problem
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------
    Reporter:  HowardK   |         Owner:  stepan@…
        Type:  defect    |        Status:  new
    Priority:  major     |     Milestone:
   Component:  coreboot  |      Keywords:  e350m1, ethernet, family14
Dependencies:            |  Patch Status:  there is no patch
-------------------------+-------------------------------------------
 I see slow data reception with the onboard gigabit ethernet NIC
 on the ASRock E350M1 with coreboot. Using SeaBios payload to boot
 Debian testing with 2.6.29 kernel.

To reproduce, try the following data transmission test (with a
 gigabit switch obviously). Note that for speed this is all done
 in memory -- the transmitted data is not read from or written to
 HDD which might slow things down.

1) First on the receiving computer (the e350m1) do

user@e350m1:~ $  nc -l -p 3640  | cat > /dev/null

2) Then on the sending computer (other) do:

user@other:~ $ dd if=/dev/zero  bs=1M count=1024 | nc e350m1 3640

The data reception rate is only 5.0 to 11 MB/s rather than around 100MB/s
 expected for gigabit ethernet. Transmission in the other direction
 seems to work at the full rate. The vendor firmware works as expected.

After this test I seem to require a complete power off (i.e. PSU off) to
 recover. (Aside: is the NIC not being properly reset on boot I wonder?).

dmesg shows the messages below. (NOHZ messages from kernel/time/tick-
 sched.c
 and rate limit messages are from lib/ratelimit.c).

Does anyone know what is wrong?

[  361.320382] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.320404] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.348378] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.348912] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.560381] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.560403] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.660383] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.660406] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.736372] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.736395] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.760380] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.760400] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.816372] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.816395] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.884372] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.884395] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  361.980380] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  361.980399] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  362.000383] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  362.000401] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 08

[  366.396372] net_ratelimit: 75 callbacks suppressed

[  366.396383] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.492373] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.560257] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.656147] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.680373] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.748156] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.800379] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.868371] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  366.928372] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  367.024373] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  371.548370] net_ratelimit: 77 callbacks suppressed

[  371.548381] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up

[  371.604370] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link up
 ...
 ...

[Cristian Măgherușan-Stanciu]

Hi,

I couldn't test it, but the last post in the thread below might
provide a workaround for this issue:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg31659.html

Cristi