BMAC eth0 dropping packets (was: Debian for PPC problems)

[Brian Rectanus <brectanu@vt.edu>]

> 2. When telnetting to the mac-linux box i experience frequent shell hangs.
> Simply the screen halts and I can do nothing - sometimes only KILL -9 for
> both telnet and telnetd helps. And yes, i tried CTRL-Q
> 
> 3. Something strange seems to be happening to network connections. Namely
> when I try to upload/download a file which is more than a single KB big
> from/to a box standing just a meter away (via FTP), the system refuses to
> transfer it. The same for mail.
> The strangest thing about it is that packages (from ftp.de.debian.org) are
> downloaded just fine now! (They used to get stuck just 2 months ago, then
> after some upgrade I was able to use APT with no problems and now APT does
> not work again - though in some different way :-)

I believe this is a general Linux on PPC problem as I have seen it on
Linux/PPC and Debian.  I recieved the following email stating that
others have seen PPC dropping packets.  A quick hack is to ping the
machine you are downloading from while you download.  I have to do this
every time I upgrade via apt.  I have never had problems with telnet
(actually I use ssh), though.  Look at the following links to see my
original text and another person's text on the subject.  I am running a
Power Mac G3/233 desktop 128MB RAM,BMAC NIC and have tried kernels
through 2.2.13 with various patches.  If anyone knows of something that
may help I would be VERY greatful...

This is what ifconfig states:
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx  
          inet addr:xxx.xxx.241.124  Bcast:xxx.xxx.243.255 
Mask:255.255.252.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:5891308 errors:356445 dropped:348739 overruns:0
frame:356390
          TX packets:553153 errors:10 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:5 txqueuelen:100 
          Interrupt:42 Base address:0x1000 

Thanks,
-Brian

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BMAC eth0 dropping packets
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 21:43:34 +0100 (BST)
From: Adrian Taylor <ade@bits.bris.ac.uk>
To: brectanu@vt.edu, mendenmh@nashville.net

Hi

Both of you have posted messages about BMAC framing errors, at:

http://lists.linuxppc.org/listarcs/linuxppc-user/199905/msg00830.html
and
http://x26.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=510644288&CONTEXT=934577611.74842194&hitnum=0

respectively. I'm having exactly the same problems you describe (same
setup: G3/300, 128MB RAM). I'm not good enough at low-level C to
understand what the driver is doing, but I do run the LAN I am on, so I
can rule that out as the cause. I am also in the process of using a
packet
sniffer to investigate the problem. I haven't got too far yet, so this
is
just a preliminary message to let you know you're not alone (as I don't
think you knew about each other). I'll mail again when I know something
concrete-ish.

Meanwhile, I don't suppose either of you found a fix? :-)

Regards

Ade


**ALSO**

>Have any of you found a fix for this yet??
>
>Thanks,
>-Brian

Not as such, but the problem went away when I turned off the eavesdrop
protection feature on our HP J1103 hubs. Fortunately I'm the network
administrator but you guys might not be so lucky...

Ade



--
brectanu@vt.edu