[Triumf-linux-managers] Anyone has experience with this sort of a problem?

[Douglas Maas]

Hi Mina,
   This is a very common message I see all the time on LINUX boxes. 
Donald Becker (the guy who writes many of the network card drivers) says:

>It's reporting a problem.  All of the IRQ-driven, latency sensitive
>devices on the system should be reporting the problem, but my network
>drivers are the pretty much the only kernel modules that check, respond
>and report this type of problem.

>But the problem you are seeing is the driver reporting a problem with
>some _other_ part of the kernel, not a problem with the driver itself.

I don't think a new card will solve your problem

Doug Maas

Greg Hackman wrote:

> Hi Mina,
>
> I would definitely put in a newer controller if you can.
>
> I've run into similar problems on our older Caen mainframes.  The 
> latter stopped talking to the TRIUMF network completely -- I don't 
> remember all the details, but roughly speaking, Steve's explanation 
> was that a device on the network was broadcasting a lot of garbage.  
> Most users with newer, user-friendly devices were simply annoyed, but 
> the built-in ethernet hardware in the Caen's simply froze up when they 
> got more traffic than they could handle.
>
> Hope that helps ....
>
> Greg
>
>
> Mina Nozar wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am trying to solve a problem with one of our machines, Cadenza.
>>
>> Every so often, the machine gets into a "weired" state where typed 
>> commands
>> don't show up on the screen till 30 secs later and get applied then.
>>
>> It is as if some process takes over and delays the keyboard response.
>>
>> I can't find anything pointing me to the problem aside from network 
>> related
>> messages in the /var/log/messages:
>>
>> Jul 18 01:25:25 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 01:30:28 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 06:10:49 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 06:10:52 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 10:43:08 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 10:43:09 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 11:00:34 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 12:09:43 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 12:33:56 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 20:08:49 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 22:02:33 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 23:00:59 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 18 23:01:25 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 19 00:25:36 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 19 00:25:37 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 19 09:58:02 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>> Jul 19 14:04:47 cadenza kernel: eth0: Too much work in interrupt, 
>> status 8401.
>>
>> The timing of these messages doesn't correspond to any cron jobs 
>> running or to
>> any obvious heavy network traffic.
>>
>> All I have found from the net is that the above message corresponds 
>> to the driver
>> reaching the hard coded limit on the number of waiting requests that 
>> it will service per interupt.
>> This number can be changed in the driver's source code but I'd rather 
>> not go that way.
>>
>> Does anyone on this list have experience with this sort of a problem?
>> Could it be the network card that's having problems or the connection?
>>
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Mina
>>
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