Hi guys,
go easy this is my first post, got a few problems with one of my servers running kernal 2.4.18-14 Redhat 8, the machine seems to lock the network card, and make it inactive till it is rebooted this is happening every few days, ive look though google and your forums and all i could find was people who had the problem but no one seemed to have a definate answer on how to fix it so i thought id give posing a copy of my error a go.

We tried changing the network card as it seems like a network card error this did nothing to help it .



Feb 21 23:25:18 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:18 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:25:26 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:26 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:25:34 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:34 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:25:42 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:42 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:25:50 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:50 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:25:58 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:25:58 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000
Feb 21 23:26:06 fire kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Feb 21 23:26:06 fire kernel: eth0: Transmit timeout, status 00000004 00000000

I get one of these messages at boot when a service tries to use the card soon after it has initialised.

I have found that it is happening while the card is still negotiating the 10/100 Mbps phase to the switch...

I don't yet know if this will really help. I've encountered the same thing with one of my systems after an upgrade to a 2003 motherboard (Asus A7N266-VM w/ 2GHz Athlon) but with the same old 2000-era NIC (3c59x). If kernel tuning doesn't solve it, I'm ready to replace the old NIC soon. But here's what I tried for now...

I checked the netdev_max_backlog parameter and found it to be only set for 300. While that should be able to handle up to 30MBytes/sec (which is more than 100Mbits/sec), it doesn't leave a lot for a backlog, which may be what's causing the driver to freeze.

I've tentatively tried this...
echo 3000 > /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_max_backlog
I did that once as root interactively to set it in the running system, and added it to /etc/rc.d/rc.local so that it'll be done again upon boot. Now we wait and see if the problem goes away or not. If it didn't solve it, I should know (with another network halt) within a couple days. Meanwhile I'll keep looking at Google and also scan for other tunable parameters which may be candidates.

It didn't help. In my case, Google leads me to conclude from others' experiences that this problem is because of the old 3c59x card or its driver, and is triggered by extreme bursts of traffic. Since the kernel tuning didn't help, I'll replace the card today. (This was probably always a risk with this driver but my older CPU/motherboard weren't able to stuff enough data onto the card so that it couldn't keep up.)

If you have the same card, then maybe this was still of some help to you. If not, sorry for bringing up false hope about this.

I too am getting these errors on my network card Realtek 8139c. At the first install of FEDORA core 1 everything worked. After that the second boot onwards the card gives me the following errors. I am including the output of dmesg, lspci and /proc/pci for reference. Can anybody help me on this???

dmesg output
------------------
Linux version 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl (bhcompile@daffy.perf.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2.3 20030422 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-6)) #1 Wed Oct 29 15:42:51 EST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000007ff0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000007ff0000 - 0000000007ff3000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 0000000007ff3000 - 0000000008000000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
127MB LOWMEM available.
ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000
On node 0 totalpages: 32752
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 28656 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
ACPI: RSDP (v000 JETWAY ) @ 0x000f7590
ACPI: RSDT (v001 JETWAY AWRDACPI 0x42302e31 AWRD 0x00000000) @ 0x07ff3000
ACPI: FADT (v001 JETWAY AWRDACPI 0x42302e31 AWRD 0x00000000) @ 0x07ff3040
ACPI: DSDT (v001 JETWAY AWRDACPI 0x00001000 MSFT 0x0100000c) @ 0x00000000
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1716.995 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 3420.97 BogoMIPS
Memory: 125684k/131008k available (1503k kernel code, 4936k reserved, 1110k data, 136k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 256K
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: 3febf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 3febf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.70GHz stepping 02
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20031002
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb2d0, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router default [1106/3148] at 00:00.0
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x07 (Driver version 1.16)
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
pty: 2048 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:11.1
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
VP_IDE: VIA vt8233a (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci00:11.1
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd400-0xd407, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd408-0xd40f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
hda: SAMSUNG SV4002H, ATA DISK drive
hdb: SAMSUNG SV4012H, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c040cfc0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
blk: queue c040d100, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: SAMSUNG CD-R/RW DRIVE SW-224B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: CREATIVE CD5221E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 78242976 sectors (40060 MB) w/1945KiB Cache, CHS=4870/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdb: attached ide-disk driver.
hdb: host protected area => 1
hdb: setmax LBA 78242976, native 66055248
hdb: 66055248 sectors (33820 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=4111/255/63, UDMA(33)
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 >
hdb: hdb1 hdb2
ide: late registration of driver.
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 159k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 136k freed
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 15:50:32 Oct 29 2003
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xd800, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xdc00, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,7), internal journal
Adding Swap: 265032k swap-space (priority -1)
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdd: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
Vendor: SAMSUNG Model: CD-R/RW SW-224B Rev: R205
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.11 <tigran@veritas.com>
microcode: CPU0 no microcode found! (sig=f12, pflags=4)
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
inserting floppy driver for 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.26
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet at 0xc88e4000, 00:c0:26:a9:07:d0, IRQ 10
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
divert: freeing divert_blk for eth0
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (1023 buckets, 8184 max) - 292 bytes per conntrack
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.26
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet at 0xc88fe000, 00:c0:26:a9:07:d0, IRQ 10
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty entry 0.
eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 00002000. (queue head)
eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 00002000.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
Via 686a/8233/8235 audio driver 1.9.1-ac3
via82cxxx: Six channel audio available
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:11.5 to 64
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: ALG48 (Unknown)
via82cxxx: Codec rate locked at 48Khz
via82cxxx: board #1 at 0xE000, IRQ 5
via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11
via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11
via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty entry 0.
eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 00002000. (queue head)
eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 00002000.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty entry 0.
eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 00002000. (queue head)
eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 00002000.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty entry 0.
eth0: Tx descriptor 0 is 00002000. (queue head)
eth0: Tx descriptor 1 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 2 is 00002000.
eth0: Tx descriptor 3 is 00002000.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
via_audio: ignoring drain playback error -11

lspci output
------------------
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M266 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:08.0 Communication controller: Analog Devices SM56 PCI modem
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 23)
00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 23)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 40)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5465 [Laguna] (rev 02)

/etc/pci output
-------------------
PCI devices found:
Bus 0, device 0, function 0:
Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M266 Host Bridge (rev 0).
Master Capable. Latency=8.
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe0000000 [0xe3ffffff].
Bus 0, device 1, function 0:
PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP] (rev 0).
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=12.
Bus 0, device 8, function 0:
Communication controller: Analog Devices SM56 PCI modem (rev 0).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=1.Max Lat=255.
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe9001000 [0xe90010ff].
Bus 0, device 10, function 0:
Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 16).
IRQ 10.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=32.Max Lat=64.
I/O at 0xd000 [0xd0ff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe9000000 [0xe90000ff].
Bus 0, device 17, function 0:
ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge (rev 0).
Bus 0, device 17, function 1:
IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 6).
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xd400 [0xd40f].
Bus 0, device 17, function 2:
USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 35).
IRQ 10.
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xd800 [0xd81f].
Bus 0, device 17, function 3:
USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (#2) (rev 35).
IRQ 10.
Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdc1f].
Bus 0, device 17, function 5:
Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 64).
IRQ 5.
I/O at 0xe000 [0xe0ff].
Bus 1, device 0, function 0:
VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5465 [Laguna] (rev 2).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=32. Min Gnt=16.Max Lat=16.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe4000000 [0xe5ffffff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe7000000 [0xe700ffff].



I have tried giving "noapic" to grub at the command line . Also switched off apic at BIOS level but this problem is still occuring.

Thanks.

It worked for me after days of searching!

let me know please if it helped you to....

Since i am unable to post links yet: e1000.sourceforge.net/doku.php?id=known_issues&DokuWiki=f0b1bbe161d58fa8ae4d5a737225f5aa

82573(V/L/E) TX Unit Hang messages
Several NIC's with the 82573 chipset display “TX unit hang” messages during normal operation with the linux e1000 driver. The issue appears both with TSO enabled and disabled, and is caused by a power management function that is enabled in the EEPROM. Early releases of the chipsets to vendors had the EEPROM bit that enabled the feature. After the issue was discovered newer adapters were released with the feature disabled in the EEPROM.
You can test whether your system is affected by this bug using the script found on the Tx Unit Hang page.
If you encounter the problem in an adapter, and the chipset is an 82573-based one, you can verify that your adapter needs the fix by using ethtool:
# ethtool -e eth0
Offset Values
------ ------
0x0000 00 12 34 56 fe dc 30 0d 46 f7 f4 00 ff ff ff ff
0x0010 ff ff ff ff 6b 02 8c 10 d9 15 8c 10 86 80 de 83
^^
The value at offset 0x001e (de) has bit 0 unset. This enables the problematic powersaving feature. In this case, the EEPROM needs to read “df” at offset 0x001e.
A one-time EEPROM fix is available as a shell script. This script will verify that the adapter is applicable to the fix and if the fix is needed or not. If the fix is required, it applies the change to the EEPROM and updates the checksum. The user must reboot the system after applying the fix if changes were made to the EEPROM.
Example output of the script:
# bash fixeep-82573-dspd.sh eth0
eth0: is a "82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller"
This fixup is applicable to your hardware
executing command: ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x109a8086 offset 0x1e value 0xdf
Change made. You *MUST* reboot your machine before changes take effect!
The script can be downloaded here (fixeep-82573-dspd.sh).

I really doubt this thread is even relevant now, it was started in 2003 and any problems extant then are likely to no longer exist.

It's relevant to me. I have several production servers built ca. 2003 and one of them just threw this error. Since the machine is otherwise performing well, I would rather replace or tweak a card than build a whole new machine.