Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think.com!mintaka!spdcc!merk!brennan
From: brennan@merk.UUCP (Rich Brennan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: ISC TCP/IP 1.2 hangs?
Summary: 3C503 works, WD8003 still doesn't
Message-ID: <4107@merk.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 91 02:31:32 GMT
References: <1991Jun06.224153.209@pinhead.pegasus.com> <4104@merk.UUCP> <1991Jun11.152602.22404@ico.isc.com> <4105@merk.UUCP>
Reply-To: brennan@merk.com (Rich Brennan)
Organization: Technology Partners, Inc.
Lines: 61

In article <4105@merk.UUCP> brennan@merk.UUCP (Rich Brennan) writes:
>In article <1991Jun11.152602.22404@ico.isc.com> dougm@ico.ISC.COM (Doug McCallum) writes:
>>I suspect that the WD driver is more robust than the 3C503 driver although both
>>should be fine.  There may be some systems that have problems with older WD
>>cards so hardware can't be ruled out but in those cases the problems will
>>usually appear as the network not working at all and will be hardware related
>>not software.
>
>I've had a few emails saying that switching from WD8003 to a 3C503 fixed
>the problem. One even said going from WD8003 to the WD8013 fixed it.
[etc.]

Well, here's my posting on my findings. I've emailed it to ISC support, too,
so they don't have to scrounge through c.u.sysv386 to find it:

				----

Here's my update to the PC-Interface panic/TCP hangs with ISC 2.2.1 and
a WD8003.

First, I got a call from ISC support. During the course of conversation
I mentioned that I had installed the "network drivers" update NT00001. He
said I didn't need it, and that I should back it out. I did, and sure
enough "netstat -i" doesn't panic the system anymore.

Next I installed the new 3c503 I purchased. I beat on the system pretty
heavily all weekend, and compared with running with the WD8003:

	1) I never panic'ed when running PC-Interface
	2) VP/IX never died giving me "cannot emulate instruction"
		(or similar) diagnostics
	3) TCP/IP never hung

Granted, I didn't run TCP/IP for a week to see if it hung, so that problem
may still be present (I'll let you know in a week).

Just to sanity check that backing out the NT00001 update didn't fix my
problems, I reinstalled my WD8003 card. I even configured the WD8003 to the
identical I/O and shared memory addresses used by the 3C503.

I booted my system, and within 15 minutes of doing a continuous "ls -lR"
over an rlogin connection, VP/IX trapped out with the above error, and the
rlogin connection hung. Now knowing that "netstat -i" wouldn't panic my
system, I tried it: when netstat tried to retrieve the packet counts from
the WD driver, I received an "ioctl timed out" diagnostic. netstat was
able to get the packet counts from the loopback driver, and I was still
able to rlogin using the loopback driver, i.e. TCP/IP wasn't hung, only
the WD8003 subsystem.

I think I'm going to stand by my guess: there's some race condition in the
optimized WD8003 driver causing itself to hangup.

I'm willing to try someone's "known good" WD8003 if the consensus is that
my hardware sucks; we can arrange for some security just so you know I'm
not out collecting Ethernet boards :-).



Rich
-- 
brennan@merk.com	...!uunet!merk!brennan		Rich Brennan