Dell GX260 / x86 Sol 9 / NIC very slow

From: Geoff Lane (zzassgl@zoe.mcc.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 01 2004 - 10:51:27 EDT


I'm running Solaris 9 on a Dell GX260 with Intel NIC chips on the motherboard
(equiv to an Intel Pro/1000 card and using the latest INTCGigaE drivers from
Intel.)

The current recommended patch set makes the PC act in a very strange manner.

The kernel CPU goes to about 50% and stays there and network connections are
VERY slow. If you ping the system from another machine you can watch the
ping times slowly increment from sub-millisecond response to a 1 second
response in 10 or 20 mSec jumps. When it hits 1 second the time starts from
a very low value again. There is also a 5% packet loss. Normally pings on
this network will run in sub-millisecond times and zero packet loss.

64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3181 ttl=255 time=964 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3182 ttl=255 time=978 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3183 ttl=255 time=981 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3184 ttl=255 time=995 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3185 ttl=255 time=1008 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3186 ttl=255 time=9.15 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3187 ttl=255 time=22.7 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3188 ttl=255 time=26.3 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3189 ttl=255 time=40.1 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3190 ttl=255 time=53.8 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3191 ttl=255 time=67.3 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3192 ttl=255 time=80.8 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3193 ttl=255 time=90.1 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3194 ttl=255 time=100 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3195 ttl=255 time=120 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3196 ttl=255 time=133 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3197 ttl=255 time=1172 ms
64 bytes from zoe : icmp_seq=3198 ttl=255 time=1184 ms

I've tracked the problem down to something in the 112234 series of Kernel
patches. The 112234-08 version works OK, the 112234-12 (and newest) version
shows the problem.

Has anybody already worked out what is happening here?

Thanks, summary will follow.

-- 
| Geoff. Lane | Manchester Computing | Manchester | M13 9PL | England |
"Bother", said Pooh, as he sunk his twelfth Guinness
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