On Fri, Dec 18, 1998 at 06:47:34AM +1100, Robert Elz wrote:
> A lance overflow means that the lance received the packet OK, and has a buffer
> in which to store it, but the CPU didn't grant it enough bus cycles to
> actually get the incoming packet from the lance into ram.    That is decidely
> not good.
> 
> I'd suggest just deleting the message - at the very least that will avoid
> the messages contributing to further problems (kernel printfs are to be
> avoided where possible, which is why they generally only indicate serious 
> problems).
> 
> If this doesn't make things "good enough" it might be worth looking for
> one of the buffered ethernet sbus cards, and seeing if that will work better.

And if the problems occur when doing NFS transfers, it might help running
NFS over TCP instead of UDP.  UDP sends datagrams as fast as it can, flooding
the slower machine.  TCP only sends a few packets, then stops to wait for
ACK's.  This makes a big difference in certain environments (been there).

(I _think_ I mostly see overruns with my fast NFS server.. and I'm not
running NFS over TCP right now.)

  -jm