Subject: Re: momentary freezes in -current
To: Martin Husemann <martin@duskware.de>
From: None <martijnb@atlas.ipv6.stack.nl>
List: current-users
Date: 08/06/2006 14:05:24
Martin Husemann wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 06, 2006 at 07:46:17AM +0000, Martijn van Buul wrote:
> > * Restarting dhclient fixes the problem - at least temporarily.
> 
> Is the freeze long enough to exeriment?

The situation persists until I "fix" it.

> This could be a mac filter prorgraming problem in the driver, maybe starting
> a tcpdump during the freeze (on the "frozen" machine) works around it too?

Sadly, it doesn't. In fact, the tcpdump will even show traffic coming by - 
it's just that the rest of the driver seems to ignore it. But this was with
a dhclient sitting idle (but keeping a BPF device open)

> Restarting dhclient would close/open a BPF device, tcpdump could have the
> same effect.

well, on the other hand, restarting dhclient meant that there were no BPF
devices opened at all, as I never considered having tcpdump running while 
restarting dhclient. Maybe the key lies in having no BPF devices opened at
all. I'll try playing with that next time it occurs.

> Maybe even keeping the device in promiscous mode (e.g. by running a tcpdump
> w/o -p to /dev/null) could work around it too.

The problem is that it is unpredictable. It has occurred on three days on
a row, and it's been OK for 3 weeks. I haven't been able to find a sequence
of events that will trigger it.