sky2 network driver heavy usage leads to hang

[JJ]

There appears to be an issue related to transmit/recieve buffers with the Marvell Yukon PCI-E gigabit LAN NIC, that appears to be correctable with the official drivers in windows, but has not been fixed for the sky2 driver. Currently I am running the kernel version 2.6.15-16-386. The problem mostly is repeated when I attempt to use some remote programs via ssh with some graphical XWindows. It seems to be fairly repeatable that once the network has been used a lot it appears the driver has hung, and the network interface must be restarted to get it going again.

Here is a link that describes fixing the problem with official drivers: http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t9643.html (it's towards the bottom.) I dont know if it will help solve the problem or not. Hopefully this is all the needed info.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

> Currently I am running the kernel version 2.6.15-16-386.

Please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu packages and try again.

[JJ (jsestri2)]

I ran the full upgrade this morning, and within 40 minutes of stress it failed on me again. The latest packages did not fix my problems.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Thanks for testing.

[rick (sheepiedog)]

I can confirm this bug. The same problem exists in 2.6.16 and 2.6.17-rc upstream vanilla and mm kernels. A small patch is needed to make the syskonnect driver build with 2.6.16+ kernels.

[Angelo Lisco (angystardust-gmail)]

Ben Collins has backported the sky2 driver from 2.6.16.13. It will be in the next kernel upload. it should fix this bug.
Please test when it is available and let us know.

[JJ (jsestri2)]

I have just upgraded and now have kernel 2.6.15-20-386. Hopefully that is the correct kernel, if not, let me know. I will continue to test, however, I have changed locations and don't have access to the same network resources so it may be more work to get the hiccup I was getting before. I will keep you posted.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

2.6.15-20 is quite old. You need -23

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

I'm using Feisty. It is not fixed yet. I just had to
sudo modprobe -r sky2
sudo modprobe sky2

to get my connection going. Either the bug's been reintroduced, or it's never been fixed, and given that I've had this issue in Dapper, Edgy, and Feisty with no resolution at any point, I'm thinking it was never truly fixed.

[Stephen Hemminger (shemminger)]

I have added a number of bug fixes for 2.6.23, and submitted backports of these for 2.6.22.y.
It would be useful if the Ubuntu kernel maintainers would backport the 2.6.22 driver (probably
need to wait until 2.6.22.4).