Comment 5 for bug 615053

We are experiencing a very similar situation. We have a server running Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) as a Xen host with several guests. From time to time the network interface on the host locks up in a cycle of timeouts and trying to reset itself. This has happened five times in the past five weeks, three of those in the past week.

We have a second Xen host server with nearly the same configuration that has not experienced this network issue. It does have a newer firmware version for the tg3 (5721-v3.61) than the server experiencing the problem (5721-v3.55a). It is possible that the Xen guests on the second server do not have the network traffic loads that trigger the problem on the first server.

David, can you compare the firmware versions of your servers? Is it possible this issue has been fixed in the firmware?

Below are some facts about our server that is experiencing the problem.

Here is a snippet from the syslog:
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.812042] tg3: eth0: transmit timed out, resetting
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.812084] tg3: DEBUG: MAC_TX_STATUS[00000008] MAC_RX_STATUS[00000000]
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.812122] tg3: DEBUG: RDMAC_STATUS[00000000] WDMAC_STATUS[00000000]
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.913855] tg3: tg3_stop_block timed out, ofs=4800 enable_bit=2
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.936658] tg3: eth0: Link is down.
May 22 11:07:07 carndum kernel: [174743.984229] br0: port 1(eth0) entering disabled state
May 22 11:07:10 carndum kernel: [174747.106573] tg3: eth0: Link is up at 1000 Mbps, full duplex.
May 22 11:07:10 carndum kernel: [174747.106612] tg3: eth0: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX.
May 22 11:07:10 carndum kernel: [174747.106849] br0: port 1(eth0) entering forwarding state

lspci snippet:
0e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)
0f:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)

lshw snippet:
*-network
                description: Ethernet interface
                product: NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
                vendor: Broadcom Corporation
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:0e:00.0
                logical name: eth0
                version: 11
                serial: 00:19:bb:eb:e4:1c
                size: 1GB/s
                capacity: 1GB/s
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
                configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.102 duplex=full firmware=5721-v3.55a, ASFIPMI v6.17 latency=0 multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=1GB/s
                resources: irq:16 memory:dc200000-dc20ffff