Older networkcards buggy with >gentoo-sources-2.6.8 ?

[petterg]

Does anyone else run into trouble when using multiple older networkcards?

Here's my experiece:
For experimental puposes I had the need of a box with 3 networkcards, and I had a box running gentoo-sources-2.6.8, so I placed two 3com 905 and a Tulip card into that box. A quick ping-check showed that the cards were working. Then I did a full system upgrade (mulitiple emerge -e world) and got a system running gentoo-sources-2.6.12 (which was the latest stable at the time).
Once rebooted with the kernel-2.6.12 (networkdrivers compiled into the kernel) only one of the 3com cards got reply on ping. I could ping the the (static) IP of the other cards from localhost, no trafic would go to the networks they were connected to. (The LEDs on all the cards and switches they were connected to indicated link.)
I pulled out the working 3com card - then the other 3com card started working. The tulip was still dead.
I pulled out the other 3com card too (leaving only the tulip behind) - The tulip started to work.
I pluged in another tulip card - They were both working.
Plugged in the 3com that was working in the first place - All 3 cards were dead.

So I started to test combinations of all the cards I had in storage: 5 3c905a/b/c, 3 tulip, 2 intel e100, 2 intel e1000
First checking that all cards were working when installed alone - and they were
Turns out that
any combination two cards of tulip + 3com makes only one card working
any combination of three cards of tulip + 3com makes 0 or 1 card working
any combination of three tulips: all dead
any combination of three 3coms: one or two working
If a intel card is added to any of the configurations the 3com/tulips are unaffected while the intel cards always seem work.

I also had a tulip card with 4 interfaces. On this card all interfaces were working.


That was in October.

Now, in April I had the need for a box with two network cards. This time I was running gentoo-sources-2.6.15. Remembering from October I installed two tulips - only one were working. So I tried 3com + tulip - only one were working.
And here we go again:
This time the only combination of two cards I get to work is Intel + [what ever].
3com + 3com = 0 or 1 working cards
3com + tulip = 0 or 1 working cards
tulip + tulip = 0 working cards
Intel + anything = 2 working cards


Has anyone else had this kind of problems?

[NeddySeagoon]

petterg,

By older, do you mean all ISA cards, a mix of ISA and PCI, or early PCI cards ?
ISA cards have always been a struggle to get to work in a mixed ISA/PCI environment.

Post your lspci output, the manual settings for any ISA cards and the output of less /proc/interrupts
When you run

[petterg]

They're all pci cards.

They all exist. There are IP adresses assigned to each of them. Each IP responds to ping from localhost. Everything works, except that they don't transmit any packages over the cable.
Basically they're just being shy - talking to thems selves.

[NeddySeagoon]

petterg,

Post the output of the route command when all three cards have and IP and the content of /etc/resolv.conf.
You may want to mask any public IPs that show there by hiding the first two octets.

Some idea ove your network topology would be useful too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[petterg]

Heres the output of ifconfig -a. I skipped the output for dummy, lo, gre and tun devices.