Re: RTL-Poll Error and <sleep> for ever

[Marty Connor <mdc@thinguin.org>]

On 1/15/2000 3:19 PM dirk@goe.net Dirk von Suchodoletz wrote:
>	Im using now the new etherboot 4.4.0, but I have still some
>problems with my rtl8139 based cards: If the machine has not booted, it
>never will be happen until comlete reboot of the computer. It shows the
>message <sleep> on and on and sometimes rtl_poll_error ...  ny ideas?

Is this with an EPROM or a floppy?  What does "size rtl8139.tmp" say?
When you say "If the machine has not booted" do you mean that you turned 
the machine on and it failed to boot the first time?  What Config options 
are you using?  If you hit ESCAPE during the <sleep>s does it do anything?

To debug the receive timeouts, you can edit the file "rtl8139.c" and 
around line 45:

change

   #undef DEBUG_RX
to 

   #define DEBUG_RX

then do "make rtl8139.fd0" to make a test floppy.

This will turn on error message printing that may give a more specific 
error. You can similarly also turn on DEBUG_TX to see what's happening 
there. 

Also, you can run 'tcpdump' in order to see what's going on in the 
conversation between the server and client.

If what you're saying is that when you ctrl-alt-delete your workstation 
it doesn't do a network boot properly but that you need to do a hardware 
reset to get it to do network boot, that could have something to do with 
your BIOS.  What kind of machine/BIOS are you talking.  What kind of 
rtl8139 card?  Does the same error occur with other cards?  Sorry for so 
many questions, but good debugging requires this.

Let us know what you discover.

Regards,

Marty

---
   Name: Martin D. Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827; Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
  Voice: (617) 491-6935, Fax: (617) 491-7046 
  Email: mdc@thinguin.org
    Web: http://www.thinguin.org/


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