Hard crash and sponteanously restart. Hard restart jeopardizes RAID etc. eth0: RX MAC fifo overflow smac[03810400]

[Rodrigo Alvarez]

1) The release of Ubuntu you are using, via 'lsb_release -rd' or System -> About Ubuntu.
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04

2) The version of the package you are using, via 'apt-cache policy packagename' or by checking in Synaptic.
rodrigo@pulga-PBG4:~$ apt-cache policy linux
linux:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: (none)
  Version table:

3) What you expected to happen
I expect my PowerBook G4 to remain stable and not crash spontaneously jeopardising my RAID1.

4) What happened instead

The machine becomes unresponsive, completely locks up and spontaneously restarts without shutting down properly.

5) Context

This machine is setup as a AFP fileserver (Netatalk 2.0.4 patched for ssl details below) and when I'm copying large amounts of data (tens of Giga Bytes) to it the machine crashes. Syslog (attached) shows tens/hundreds of records like:

Nov 12 22:57:30 pulga-PBG4 kernel: [98348.660840] eth0: RX MAC fifo overflow smac[00845822].
Nov 12 22:57:30 pulga-PBG4 kernel: [98348.677269] eth0: RX MAC fifo overflow smac[00045822].
Nov 12 22:57:30 pulga-PBG4 kernel: [98349.099702] eth0: RX MAC fifo overflow smac[02045822].
Nov 12 22:57:31 pulga-PBG4 kernel: [98349.630803] eth0: RX MAC fifo overflow smac[03810400].

apt-cache policy netatalk
netatalk:
  Installed: 2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu1
  Version table:
     2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu1 0
        500 http://ports.ubuntu.com jaunty/universe Packages
 *** 2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

6) Plead

Please help. I've invested hundreds of hours into learning linux/ubuntu to set up a scalable storage system (RAID through AFP) and if this bug persists I can not trust the stability of my data.

I'm new to linux/ubuntu so if I'm missing something I'm happy to pay for support. I think this is a real bug though...

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: powerpc
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-6-powerpc 2.6.28-6.20
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: linux-ports
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-6-powerpc ppc

[Rodrigo Alvarez (rodrigo-alvarez-i)]

Some potentially relevant links to old patches for this ethernet addapter:

http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.2/0846.html
http://search.luky.org/linux-kernel.2003/msg72647.html
http://<email address hidden>/msg07466.html
http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=16953&action=diff&context=patch&collapsed=&headers=1&format=raw
http://<email address hidden>/msg07466.html

[Rodrigo Alvarez (rodrigo-alvarez-i)]

Problem persists, and happens when transferring large data files. Please help