Re: [E1000-devel] Tx Unit Hang on 82540EP

[Tantilov, E. S <emi...@in...>]

zsolt foldvari wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've got a Thinkpad T41 with Intel Gb ethernet i/f for 5 years now
> without any problem so far. About a month ago suddenly I started to
> have "Tx Unit Hang" messages in syslog and to lose connection. Since
> then the frequency of this has been increasing and now it's almost
> impossible to have network connection at all.

Can you post the output from dmesg after the hangs? Usually there is some debug info associated with the hang that may help to root cause your issue. More information about the kernel (and config) you're using can also be helpful.
 
> Since I didn't install/update any sw around that date when the whole
> issue started, I immediately thought it was a hw problem. However,
> after searching the net I found that the "Tx Unit Hang" is a very
> famous and frequent issue these days so I lost my confidence.

The tx hang condition can be caused by all kinds of issues including HW problems. Don't be discouraged just because you've seen multiple reports on the net. The hang check is there to help in reporting and root causing the issue. Unless reported on the same HW as yours the reports you've seen most likely are unrelated to your case.

> During the weekend I tried e1000 8.0.6 and even 8.0.9 (also with
> TxDescriptors=4096 TxDescriptorStep=4) without any improvement.
> 
> Is there any diagnosis tool or any way to be sure whether I have a hw
> or sw problem??

Again - we'll need full dmesg output. You can also run driver diagnostic using `ethtool -t eth0`
 
> Cheers,
> Zsolt

Thanks,
Emil