Hi I installed the following driver.
http://www.f.csce.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~shigeaki//software/freebsd-nfe.html
Before I had the nve driver which was unstable on this server and on a
prior server in both cases causing either spontaneous reboot or just a
crash when under load.
So far touchwood the nfe driver has stayed up and running at almost 3
days uptime and has had some stress.
I know the driver supports device polling which I have chosen not to
use yet as I wanted to see initially if it was more stable in its
default mode. But what I want to know is the following if possible
please.
My ifconfig output below.
nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
options=8<VLAN_MTU>
inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast x.x.x.x
inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffffff broadcast x.x.x.x
ether x
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseTX <full-duplex>)
status: active
1 - is there a man page for nfe anywhere?
2 - does it support hardware checksum I remember reading it does but
from ifconfig output it appears to not be in use so if it does support
it how do I enable it?
3 - same with TOS?
4 - how do I enable jumbo frames if it supports it?
5 - is it safe to use with zero copy sockets?
6 - I currently have both net.isr.direct and mpsafenet disabled is
this driver safe to use on them?
Thanks
Chris
On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 12:57:23AM +0100, Chris wrote:> nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 > options=8<VLAN_MTU> > inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast x.x.x.x > inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffffff broadcast x.x.x.x > ether x > media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseTX <full-duplex>) > status: active > > 1 - is there a man page for nfe anywhere?Closest thing I can find would be the manpage from -CURRENT's nfe(4), which is supposedly the same code. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nfe&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7-current&format=html> 2 - does it support hardware checksum I remember reading it does but > from ifconfig output it appears to not be in use so if it does support > it how do I enable it?It does support it, but I don't know the circumstances surrounding when it gets enabled. That is to say, it's known that some versions of the chip (and/or associated PHY) have bugs, so possibly hardware checksum offloading is known to be broken on the system you're on. Taken from my 7-CURRENT box at home (Asus A8N-E, nForce 4-based): nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500 options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,TSO4> ether 00:15:f2:17:30:e9 inet 192.168.1.51 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 media: Ethernet 1000baseTX <full-duplex> status: active I do not explicitly specify rxcsum or txcsum in my rc.conf ifconfig line.> 3 - same with TOS?TOS (type-of-service) or TSO? If TSO, see above ifconfig.> 4 - how do I enable jumbo frames if it supports it?You should take a bit more itme to read the webpage you obtained the driver from. I see these on the page: 2007/01/06 Added jumbo frame support. [...] Fixed a bug to handle Tx/Rx checksum offload settings with ifconfig. 2006/08/11 Added support for jumbo frame capability. yongari@ (Pyun YongHyeon) should be able to provide additional help with both.> 5 - is it safe to use with zero copy sockets?No idea.> 6 - I currently have both net.isr.direct and mpsafenet disabled is > this driver safe to use on them?No idea. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
On 28/09/2007, Pyun YongHyeon <pyunyh@gmail.com> wrote:> On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 06:30:20PM +0100, Chris wrote: > > On 27/09/2007, Pyun YongHyeon <pyunyh@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 04:44:09PM +0100, Chris wrote: > > [...] > > > > > > > The card is more stable when using nve driver no crashes still but the > > > > performance is around the same maxing out at around 200mbit. I was > > > > expecting nearer 400-500mbit. > > > > > > > > e1000phy0: <Marvell 88E1116 Gigabit PHY> on miibus0 > > > > > > > > > > There had been issues nfe(4) with 88E1116/88E1149 PHYs but your issue > > > seems to be different one. How about manually set media configuration? > > > For example, "ifconfig nfe0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex" > > > > > [...] > > > > > I typod I meant to say nve was unstable and nfe has been rock solid so > > great work with the driver. I enabled mpsafe now and still no > > problems and its gave me a little more performance as well, a shame my > > nic has no hardware features (unusual for a gigabit nic) but overall > > glad its at least stable. > > > > How did you check network performance? > Maxing out at around 200Mbps seems weird. Personally, I had never seen > GigE hardwares that saturate at 200Mbps. One of causes I can think of > is speed/duplex mismatches with link partner. Manually setting > speed/duplex might fix your performance issue, I guess. > > -- > Regards, > Pyun YongHyeon >These are ftp transfers it is running on a amd62 x2 dual core processor and gig of ram, when at max speed cpu usage is very high in excess of 80% but not completely maxed out. It now seems to be able to sustain around 30meg/sec the highest I have seen I havent done any other testing so if you have a better way it would be good to know thanks. Please bare in mind I have no local access to the server so crashing it eg. is expensive for as will have to pay for a kvm switch netstat -i indicates no collisions for a duplex mismatch so not keen on trying a manual negotiotian again for reasons above. So even for a card with no hardware features you would expect it to exceed 200mbit easily? I havent enabled net isr setting I wonder if that will help. Chris