Bug 15517

Summary: big file transfers stall and break network
Product: Networking Reporter: conrad_s (conrad_s)
Component: IPV4Assignee: Stephen Hemminger (stephen)
Status: RESOLVED CODE_FIX    
Severity: high CC: alan, conrad_s, mcarlson
Priority: P1    
Hardware: x86-64   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 2.6.32.9 Subsystem:
Regression: Yes Bisected commit-id:
Attachments: lspci output, from working 2.6.31
dmesg, from working 2.6.31

Description conrad_s 2010-03-11 14:40:10 UTC
Created attachment 25475 [details]
lspci output, from working 2.6.31

Upgrading to kernel 2.6.32.9 on a 64-bit machine (Fedora 12, 2.6.32.9-67.fc12.x86_64) caused breakage in transfer of large files over SSH and SMB, followed by breaking network access.

To reproduce, copy a large file (> 900 MB) using SSH or SMB (mounted either directly via "mount" or indirectly via "gfvs / nautilus").  Copy stalls and network becomes unusable (e.g. can't ssh to any other host).

Previous kernel 2.6.31.12 (Fedora 12, 2.6.31.12-174.2.22.fc12.x86_64) works fine.
Comment 1 conrad_s 2010-03-11 14:43:03 UTC
Created attachment 25476 [details]
dmesg, from working 2.6.31
Comment 2 Matt Carlson 2010-03-11 22:16:31 UTC
I think an upstream kernel change allowed scatter/gather fragments to be sized less than or equal to 8 bytes.  This exposed a 5906 chip bug.  Commit 92c6b8d16a36df3f28b2537bed2a56491fb08f11 fixes the problem.  This commit was integrated into the 3.103 version of the tg3 driver.  Mike Pagano has submitted this driver to stable and it has been accepted.