syslog: kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!

[Clayton <lists@ckintl.biz>]

Hi, this is a short example of the disturbing behavior in my syslog right now:

Jan 22 16:03:19 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:21 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:23 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:25 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:27 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:32 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:34 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:36 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:38 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!
Jan 22 16:03:40 box kernel: eth9: interrupt(s) dropped!

Should I be concerned about this? Is this indicative of some sort of hardware problem, or maybe a kernel problem, am I probably taking a big network performance hit? The performance aspect is kind of hard for me to gauge right now because I am using it on a quite slow network.

I thought it might have been a problem with my PCMCIA network card, or with a particular PCMCIA slot, but seems to happen with at least two cards that look good on another machine, and it happens in both PCMCIA slots. There is a wireless card in the other slot which does not appear to generate these errors. The errors also happen whether or not there is another network card plugged in.

This is happening on a Thinkpad 560E, which is an old Pentium One that I am using as a router/firewall/wireless Access Point. I am running Debian Sarge with 2.4.27. At the moment, the errors are being generated by a 3Com Megahertz 589E card:

# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
  product info: "Belkin", "11Mbps Wireless Notebook Network Adapter", "Version 01.02", ""
  manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
  function: 6 (network)
Socket 1:
  product info: "3Com", "Megahertz 589E", "TP/BNC LAN PC Card", "005"
  manfid: 0x0101, 0x0589
  function: 6 (network)

# lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82437MX Mob. System Ctrlr (MTSC) & 82438MX Data Path (MTDP) (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 Bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82371MX Mobile PCI I/O IDE Xcelerator (MPIIX) (rev 03)
0000:00:03.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems TGUI 9660/938x/968x (rev d3)
0000:00:13.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev e2)