asterisk users - Feb 2007 - Dell PowerEdge 2950 Sharing NIC IRQ with Digium Card

Hi folks.. just a few weeks ago I wrote this to someone else:
------------------------
We have several 2900s in production as VoIP servers.. no lockups.
On every server I go into the BIOS and:

* Disable USB
* Disabled uneeded things like Parallel, Serial
* Put ETH0 on a seperate IRQ from the Digium card

And everything's fine.  Dell's do NOT have to share IRQs... go into your
BIOS and change them
------------------------

And this is still true.  However, we recently got a 2950 to use as a VoIP
server with a digium 4 port TDM2400 (I believe) analog card.   Well wouldn't
you know.... the Dell BIOS is showing NIC1 AND NIC2 AND Digium Card sharing
the same IRQ.  No matter what I change one of them two, the other two
follow.   I've tried moving the Digium card to the other PCI slot and the
IRQ problem still exists.      I talked to Dell technical support and they
said "oh all our new machines share IRQs like that, the way you are trying
to do it is archaic".  What?!?!   The Dell tech guy kept saying that I can
define an IRQ in Linux, and I kept telling him that I need two unique (not
virtual) IRQs.. one for the NIC and one for the Digium card.  He said "yeah
we've had other calls about Digium cards in these servers not working".
ARG!    Now I'm in a real quandry.

Does anyone have any work around solutions for this issue on a 2950 (or
other) Dell servers that now apparently are shipping with shared IRQs?!?!
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On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Matt wrote:
> Hi folks.. just a few weeks ago I wrote this to someone else:
> ------------------------
> We have several 2900s in production as VoIP servers.. no lockups.
> On every server I go into the BIOS and:
>
> * Disable USB
> * Disabled uneeded things like Parallel, Serial
> * Put ETH0 on a seperate IRQ from the Digium card
>
> And everything's fine.  Dell's do NOT have to share IRQs... go into
your
> BIOS and change them
> ------------------------
>
> And this is still true.  However, we recently got a 2950 to use as a VoIP
> server with a digium 4 port TDM2400 (I believe) analog card.   Well
wouldn't
> you know.... the Dell BIOS is showing NIC1 AND NIC2 AND Digium Card sharing
> the same IRQ.  No matter what I change one of them two, the other two
> follow.   I've tried moving the Digium card to the other PCI slot and
the
> IRQ problem still exists.      I talked to Dell technical support and they
> said "oh all our new machines share IRQs like that, the way you are
trying
> to do it is archaic".  What?!?!   The Dell tech guy kept saying that I
can
> define an IRQ in Linux, and I kept telling him that I need two unique (not
> virtual) IRQs.. one for the NIC and one for the Digium card.  He said
"yeah
> we've had other calls about Digium cards in these servers not
working".
> ARG!    Now I'm in a real quandry.
Lol, see my replies to the thread.  This crappy Dell shit always shares 
irq's.

For my next servers I'll be ordering Arima mainboards I think and assemble 
the things myself again.

>>>>> "M" == Matt  <mhoppes@gmail.com> writes:
M> I talked to Dell technical support and they said "oh all our new
M> machines share IRQs like that, the way you are trying to do it is
M> archaic".

The technical support is right. Digium should fix their driver (or
possibly the card). Perhaps it's fixed in the newest Zaptel; there was
a notice about sharing IRQ's in the release notes.


/Benny

> to do it is archaic".  What?!?!   The Dell tech guy kept saying that
> I can
> define an IRQ in Linux, and I kept telling him that I need two unique
> (not
Doesn't IO-APIC work for you or is that what you meant by
"virtual" IRQ?
I thought IO-APIC changed the way the APIC worked but it was under OS
control and therefore they could put smaller/simpler/cheaper BIOS in
the raw box.

Please correct me if I'm missing the boat. (I had a sharing problem in
my PowerEdge 1400SC and IO-APIC seemed to fix it up nicely. The server
has been in operation for 6 yrs now with Asterisk running on it for the
past 3).

David Cook