# Linux 2.6.29 Network Breakage

## harrisonmetz

Hello,

I just upgraded to 2.6.29 and I can use my system for a bit, but then the network stops working. I have restarted a few times, and it works again, but breaks between 2 mins and 2 hours into usage. Interestingly, I downgraded to 2.6.28 and it would not work until I turned off my computer completely and turned it back on. I have seen this before trying to use other operating systems which "do something" to break my Ethernet to the point where I have to turn off (unplug) my computer and turn it back on to get it working.

Looking into this issue more, I used wireshark (on another machine) to see what I could find. Every packet that the broken machine sends is received by the destination, however the broken machine sees no packets sent to it. For example, It was trying to resolve the Ethernet address of the DNS server, but the response never made it back. So, obviously, doing anything on the network on the broken machine just results in it trying to ARP query other machines on the local network but never getting the response (even though they are sent back).

I am using a tainted kernel because of the NVIDIA drivers. I don't suspect them of causing harm, but who knows? (Thats why its "tainted")

Lastly, here is my lspci:

```

vodka ~ # lspci

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Memory Controller (rev a2)

00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 LPC Bridge (rev a3)

00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SMBus (rev a3)

00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a1)

00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a2)

00:04.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 IDE (rev a1)

00:05.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)

00:05.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)

00:05.2 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)

00:06.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI bridge (rev a2)

00:06.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)

00:08.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

00:09.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)

00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)

00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control

00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control

01:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)

03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)

03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)

```

EDIT: Duplicate. Realized someone posted this in another post (thanks saellaven): http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.network/123393 I will give this option a try.

----------

## jathlon

I had a very similar problem here with a much simpler set up.  I haven't investigated at all since it's my masquerade box,  and I know the old kernel works. :)

For anyone who's curious;

```
darkstar ~ # lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HR/HO/HH (ICH8R/DO/DH) 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT (rev a1)

02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 6c)

02:02.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
```

```
darkstar ~ # emerge --info

Portage 2.1.6.10 (default/linux/amd64/2008.0, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.28.7-a x86_64)

=================================================================

System uname: Linux-2.6.28.7-a-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_CPU_6400_@_2.13GHz-with-glibc2.2.5

Timestamp of tree: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:30:17 +0000

app-shells/bash:     4.0_p10-r1

dev-lang/python:     2.5.4-r2

sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.0

sys-apps/openrc:     0.4.3-r1

sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63

sys-devel/automake:  1.5, 1.10.2

sys-devel/binutils:  2.19.1-r1

sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1

sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6a

virtual/os-headers:  2.6.28-r1

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64"

CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/alias /var/qmail/control"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"

CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo"

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"

MAKEOPTS="-j5"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"

PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

USE="7zip acl amd64 berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cups gdbm gpm iconv ipv6 isdnlog mmx mudflap multilib ncurses nls nptl nptlonly openmp pam pcre perl python readline reflection session spl sse sse2 ssl sysfs tcpdunicode zeroconf zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="vesa"

Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
```

The 2.6.29 kernel worked for about the first couple of minutes.  Then it was dead.  Couldn't ping the machine at all.  After hooking up a monitor and keyboard there was no problem logging in and rebooting to the old kernel.  emerge --info is obviously from the working kernel.

----------

## cruzki123

Same here. I can conect to a remote host and then simple lost the conection. I can't make ping to outsido or from outside. Going back to 2.6.28 works fine. I think that with early rc works, but I don't be sure.

This machine have a:

Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 7 :Cool: 

----------

## saellaven

the patch to fix it will be in 2.6.29.1 or else you can grab it off this thread

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-749474-start-0.html

----------

## platojones

I've read about a good number of broken things in 2.6.29 on lkml, including networking.  Best to wait for more patches until upgrading.

----------

## eduardhc

Same here  :Sad: . In my case, the network device is an SiS900 Fast Ethernet, embedded in motherbard.

As yet posted by otyhers, after some minutes of working network simply stops, I can't even ping the router.

Switching back to 2.6.28-r4 works fine (as I'm posting this right now...  :Wink:  )

Just curious, what is exactly this forcedeth thing...?

Regards

----------

## justinkb

forcedeth is n force (d?) eth ernet controller driver... however the bug is global not just for that driver. apply the patch from thread, recompile kernel and ur good to go, shouldnt take more than 1 min!

----------

## eduardhc

 *justinkb wrote:*   

> forcedeth is n force (d?) eth ernet controller driver... however the bug is global not just for that driver. apply the patch from thread, recompile kernel and ur good to go, shouldnt take more than 1 min!

 

I think I'll wait until 2.6.29-r1 cames along, hopefully with this fixed  :Very Happy:  , thanks.

(wanyway, I wonder what kind of testing kernel devs perform to miss this bug...)

Regards

----------

## GTVincent

I have the same problem with my Asus M3N78 pro (forcedeth network modules and nvidia intel hda sound). When I started using the 2.6.29-gentoo kernel, there was no problem at all, but after about a week or so networking started breaking. When trying to reboot, it would hang when unloading the sound drivers. I have disabled alsa and I have no trouble with networking anymore.

Edit: This is not to say that this is a desirable situation, but it works for me.

----------

## harrisonmetz

I'm actually surprised 2.6.29.1 is not out already. Ethernet not working on a major subset of computers seems like a good reason a maintenance release right away. Especially since it broke 3 out of 7 of Ingo Molnar's test boxes. Then again, this is why distros wait for a kernel to be stable before including. Sorry Linux for Scratch users, guess you may not be warned  :Razz: 

----------

## cruzki123

 *harrisonmetz wrote:*   

> I'm actually surprised 2.6.29.1 is not out already. Ethernet not working on a major subset of computers seems like a good reason a maintenance release right away. Especially since it broke 3 out of 7 of Ingo Molnar's test boxes. Then again, this is why distros wait for a kernel to be stable before including. Sorry Linux for Scratch users, guess you may not be warned 

 

I think Linus have is busy merging patches for .30  :Razz:  Even that, most distro have .28 or less, so I think it's better not force anything and wait.

----------

## GTVincent

I applied the patch, but the forcedeth module still seems to stop working after some time. At least, with alsa enabled. It kind of sounds like an Interrupt problem to me.

----------

## justinkb

i had my nforce ethernet controller running at full load for 2 hours with the patch... are you sure you did it right?  :Smile: 

----------

## GTVincent

Yep, the patch was applied correctly. When I have alsa disabled I have no network trouble, but if I do start with alsa, network will fail after a period of time. It's an office workstation though, so I'm not missing the sound. People will just have to IM me a little louder:)

----------

## justinkb

haha :p

----------

