Bug 136693 – gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r9 Sky2 module: unusabley poor transfer rate

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO

[Description Matthew 2006-06-13 11:46:21 UTC]

For the last 3 releases of the gentoo-sources I have been getting 1mb/s of performance on my network card during file transfer. 

It starts out a transfer for the first 10 seconds at an acceptable speed for a 10/100 ethernet adapter but soon after that it drops to an intollerably poor transfer rate. 
The network performance with the older sk98lin driver was fine, but since 2.6.16 it is unsupported.

Note this problem was also experienced when my system was compiled and using gcc 3.4.6

lspci:
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

emerge --info:

Portage 2.1_rc4-r5 (default-linux/x86/no-nptl, gcc-4.1.1/vanilla, glibc-2.3.6-r4, 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 i686 Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor         1.40GHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.1
dev-lang/python:     2.4.3-r1
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     [Not Present]
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r7
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1-r2
sys-devel/gcc-config: [Not Present]
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r5
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"
LINGUAS="en_ZA"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/overlays/xgl-coffee"
SYNC="rsync://ftp.leg.uct.ac.za/pub/linux/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 3dnow X aac acpi alsa arts audiofile avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo bzip2 cairo cdr cli crypt dbus dri dvd dvdread emboss encode ffmpeg firefox foomaticdb fortran ftp gcj gdbm gif glitz gnome gpm gstreamer gstreamer010 gtk gtk2 hal ieee1394 imlib ipv6 isdnlog java javascript jpeg libg++ libnotify libwww mad mikmod mmx mono motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls nokia6600 ogg openal opengl oss pam pcmcia pcre pdf pdflib perl php png pppd python quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session sms sockets spell spl sse sse2 ssl svg tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb utf8 vcd vorbis win32codecs winbind wma xfs xine xml xorg xpm xv xvid zip zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_synaptics input_devices_evdev kernel_linux linguas_en_ZA userland_GNU video_cards_vesa video_cards_fglrx"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Comment 1 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2006-06-15 11:52:09 UTC]

Please name the exact kernels that you have tested sky2 under and whether they do or do not work.

Please attach dmesg output after the slowdown and /proc/interrupts as well

[Comment 2 Matthew 2006-06-17 02:57:02 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Please name the exact kernels that you have tested sky2 under and whether they
> do or do not work.
> 
> Please attach dmesg output after the slowdown and /proc/interrupts as well
> 

gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r6  <-hangs completely on all transfers
gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r7  <-poor performance as described above
gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r8  <-poor performance as described above
gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r9  <-poor performance as described above

I have attached the dmesg and /proc/interrupts after slowdown on gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r9

/proc/interrupts:

           CPU0       
  0:    9957822  local-APIC-edge  timer
  1:      20222    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
  8:          2    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
 12:     570001    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
 14:      15763    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
 15:    1062895    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
 16:          3   IO-APIC-level  ohci1394, yenta
 17:     217811   IO-APIC-level  HDA Intel
 18:     151687   IO-APIC-level  ehci_hcd:usb1, ohci_hcd:usb2, ohci_hcd:usb3, sky2
 19:    2389020   IO-APIC-level  fglrx
 21:      21998   IO-APIC-level  acpi
NMI:          0 
LOC:    9957857 
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

[Comment 3 Matthew 2006-06-17 03:06:28 UTC]

I get an error when I try to attach, so here is my dmesg |grep sky2

sky2 v1.4 addr 0xc0200000 irq 18 Yukon-FE (0xb7) rev 1
sky2 eth1: addr 00:e0:91:02:f1:1a

[Comment 4 Matthew 2006-06-23 13:25:01 UTC]

I disabled the following in my kernel:

[ ] Local APIC support on uniprocessors                                                              
[ ]   IO-APIC support on uniprocessors (NEW) 

The problem seems to be solved. Usage is now at 30-50% as opposed to 2% experienced before.

[Comment 5 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2006-06-24 06:46:23 UTC]

A valuable observation but not an acceptable fix, reopening...

[Comment 6 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2006-07-17 07:29:52 UTC]

Please reproduce this on 2.6.18-rc2 with IO-APIC on and this patch applied: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-netdev&m=115314452123184&q=raw

[Comment 7 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2006-08-20 07:45:07 UTC]

see comment #6