Subject: 2.6.29 forcedeth hang W/O NAPI enabled

From: "Mr. Berkley Shands" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:28:25 -0500

Another new kernel, another interesting lock up. Centos 5.2, X86_84 on 
an opteron 8GB 4 cores (275 X 2).
If  CONFIG_FORCEDETH_NAPI is not enabled, then within 60 seconds of the 
console login prompt
appearing, the network becomes unresponsive. packets are seen to appear 
according to ifconfig eth0
and with ethtool -S eth0, but they go nowhere. NFS stops, ping stops, 
logins stop, ldap stops.
My network is class B, netmask 255.255.0.0, and the department router is 
directly connected
under this netmask. If I re-compile the forcedeth.ko with NAPI enabled, 
then reinstall it,
and depmod -aq then

service network stop; rmmod forcedeth; modprobe forcedeth; service 
network start

brings everything back online eventually. This was not an issue with 
2.6.28-8 or before.

Berkley