any solution for the sky2 driver for Marvell 8056

nass · 04-26-2007, 01:13 PM

hello everyone
i recently bought a GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6.
its got onboard the Marvell 8056 PCI-E gigabit ethernet controller

supposedly this chip should be supported by the sky2 driver. it has had a history of bugs but i thought all the problems would have been fixed by kernel 2.6.20.7 - sky2 module version is 1.10, that is the kernel i am running now

i have tried everything though.... i compiled as modules the sky2 driver, the skge driver, even the sk98lin driver...

sky2 has been crashing my system (slackware11) on every single attempt to copy files from sftp or samba...

i got the latest sk98lin driver from marvell's site (v. 10.0.5.3) and patched the kernel with that... re tried... again i get kernel panics....

i reformatted my whole drive cause initially i thought there might have been smth wrong with that. and tried from scratch

(with xfs file system this time - i had connected the crashes cause they occured at time of copying with reiserfs3.6 bugs. also because the kernel messages would talk abt 'reiserfs' every now and then... i did a reiserfschk on the drive and it returned no errors though. and then went ahead and copied back and forth between this harddrive and a raid partition a huge 13GB file to verify the drive works - it did))

so i reformated and started from scratch same problems...

what i need to know if anyone has come across any solution that worked for your Yukon2 based chips... note that sky2 does NOT explicitly state support for 8056... it does for a whole lot others (8053,8055,8061...) but not 8056... i dont get that..

has anyone found any info on the net concerning the specific driver and chip???

if not i guess i will be buying a pci based gigabit ethernet controller based on a different chipset...
thank you for your help
nass

jeenam · 04-26-2007, 01:24 PM

Hey, welcome to the club! The sky2 module is a pile of steaming dung. Here's a note from the newly released 2.6.21 kernel that came out today:

Stephen Hemminger (7):
sky2: disable support for 88E8056
sky2: handle descriptor errors
sky2: disable ASF on all chip types
sky2: EC-U performance and jumbo support
sky2: no jumbo on Yukon FE
sky2: version 1.14
[TCP]: Congestion control initialization.

The module has been broken for over a year. My solution was to get a realtek 8169 gigabit adapter. The driver maintainer (Stephen Hemminger) can't seem to fix this because he can't duplicate the error of getting the card to lock up.

More details here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...7eec18402694a7

nass · 04-26-2007, 01:59 PM

i see..
but look, last post in the link you gave me, a guy with 8056 chipset, said he had it up and runnig with 2.6.21rc7.

ill attempt the new kernel and if not im paying an additonal 30euros... damn

ill let you know

nass

HappyTux · 04-26-2007, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nass

hello everyone
i recently bought a GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6.
its got onboard the Marvell 8056 PCI-E gigabit ethernet controller

supposedly this chip should be supported by the sky2 driver. it has had a history of bugs but i thought all the problems would have been fixed by kernel 2.6.20.7 - sky2 module version is 1.10, that is the kernel i am running now

i have tried everything though.... i compiled as modules the sky2 driver, the skge driver, even the sk98lin driver...

sky2 has been crashing my system (slackware11) on every single attempt to copy files from sftp or samba...

i got the latest sk98lin driver from marvell's site (v. 10.0.5.3) and patched the kernel with that... re tried... again i get kernel panics....

i reformatted my whole drive cause initially i thought there might have been smth wrong with that. and tried from scratch

(with xfs file system this time - i had connected the crashes cause they occured at time of copying with reiserfs3.6 bugs. also because the kernel messages would talk abt 'reiserfs' every now and then... i did a reiserfschk on the drive and it returned no errors though. and then went ahead and copied back and forth between this harddrive and a raid partition a huge 13GB file to verify the drive works - it did))

so i reformated and started from scratch same problems...

what i need to know if anyone has come across any solution that worked for your Yukon2 based chips... note that sky2 does NOT explicitly state support for 8056... it does for a whole lot others (8053,8055,8061...) but not 8056... i dont get that..

has anyone found any info on the net concerning the specific driver and chip???

if not i guess i will be buying a pci based gigabit ethernet controller based on a different chipset...
thank you for your help
nass

I have the -S3 version of that board series using both a stock 2.6.18 Debian kernel and my own self compiled 2.6.20 the onboard NIC which is an 8056 according to the Gigabyte specs works without problems and I have downloaded 10's gb in the couple of weeks I have had it since I built my new computer, not much help to say it works fine but there are some chips out there that do.

Edit:

Code:

dmesg | grep sky
sky2 v1.10 addr 0xf8000000 irq 16 Yukon-EC Ultra (0xb4) rev 2
sky2 eth0: addr XXXXXXXX
sky2 eth0: enabling interface
sky2 eth0: ram buffer 0K
sky2 eth0: disabling interface
sky2 eth0: enabling interface
sky2 eth0: ram buffer 0K
sky2 eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex, flow control both

jeenam · 04-26-2007, 10:37 PM

The common thread with the posters on the gentoo forum who claim they have the sky2 driver working is they are not hammering the connection hard enough. Load up a bittorrent app such as rtorrent and try to push 200KB/s up and 50KB/s down. Within 48 hours, a network card using the sky2 driver will lock the entire system.

HappyTux · 04-26-2007, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeenam

The common thread with the posters on the gentoo forum who claim they have the sky2 driver working is they are not hammering the connection hard enough. Load up a bittorrent app such as rtorrent and try to push 200KB/s up and 50KB/s down. Within 48 hours, a network card using the sky2 driver will lock the entire system.

Well my ISP limits/degrades the connection for high uploads or any torrents for that matter once you get over a certain transfer speed your web connections goes to hell but usenet is a different story. I usually get at least 500KB/s down sometimes in the 700-800 range this being for a matter of hours at a time not days usually starting at night/overnight so say 8-10 hours at once and it works well the net connection stays nice and snappy too no matter what the down speed. BTW my card still works with the 2.6.21(just compiled it up about an hour ago) all I had to do was remove the ifdef broken lines perhaps I will que up 20-30gb of files so it will take a couple of days to download and test their theory.

nass · 04-27-2007, 06:42 AM

well,
so thats done,
i bought a netgear GA311 card with the realtek 8169 chipset..
what i want to know is how can i order modules r8169 get a hold of eth0 and then sky2 of eth1..
so i can have both of them running...

also.. since i have never done that before.. an instance of sshd 'listens' to both interfaces? so if get a putty to either ip (of the 2 ifs) will i get a connection?

thank you in advance
nass

jeenam · 04-27-2007, 10:15 AM

Not sure on how to force an interface to be detected as a certain ethX. As for SSH, yes it is listening on both interfaces and can be connected to via either one.

Is there are reason the r8169 needs to be eth0?

nass · 04-27-2007, 10:35 AM

well eth0 will be connected to the internet and eth1 to the internal network.
i need these fixed for the firewall....
there must be a way.. how else do 'router' boxes work?

jeenam · 04-27-2007, 02:02 PM

Just change the rules on the firewall.

HappyTux · 04-27-2007, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nass

well,
so thats done,
i bought a netgear GA311 card with the realtek 8169 chipset..
what i want to know is how can i order modules r8169 get a hold of eth0 and then sky2 of eth1..
so i can have both of them running...

also.. since i have never done that before.. an instance of sshd 'listens' to both interfaces? so if get a putty to either ip (of the 2 ifs) will i get a connection?

thank you in advance
nass

You could use something like this.

Code:

alias eth0 r8169
alias eth1 sky2

Now in Debian you would be putting those lines in a file by itself in the /etc/modprobe.d/ directory then it would be processed by modutils on boot, I believe some other distros use the /etc/modules.conf file for this purpose. As to the sshd once it is running on the box it should be accepting connections (listening) from both interfaces anyways so you would be able to connect from the outside using your eth0 by using its IP or from the inside using the IP of eth1 it just runs on the local machine listening for connections on its port you don't even need to be using an eth? you can ssh to your own box on it not much sense in it but you can do it...

Code:

>$ ssh 127.0.0.1
The authenticity of host '127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 6d:2a:f8:c6:42:9c:c8:c5:c0:3d:48:11:5d:20:fb:3a.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?        no
Host key verification failed.

steve-alexander · 05-01-2007, 12:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeenam

Not sure on how to force an interface to be detected as a certain ethX. As for SSH, yes it is listening on both interfaces and can be connected to via either one.

Is there are reason the r8169 needs to be eth0?

You can force the arrangement using the "ifrename", call it from the network rc init file.

Also you mustr setup the ifrename config file.

steve-alexander · 05-01-2007, 12:55 AM

I have this interface on my Asus P5B-Deluxe, so it's a fairly common Gig-E interface.

Mine has worked without any problems on FedoraCore6, but it is not recognized in F7-test4.

The problem has already been stated unclearly. The PCI ID for this part is currently being rejected by the sky2 driver starting somewhere between 2.6.20.1 and 2.6.20.7 . The PCI recognition code for this part is simply ifdef'ed out with a comment that it's broken.

Loading the current sky2 driver causes no problem on my system, but it doesn't recognize the part and so no interface is created.

I don't understand exactly why it was snipped out - the old driver worked great for me.

I'll explore a bit further, but forunately the other Gig-E on my system (a Marvell that uses the skge driver) still works.

steve-alexander · 05-01-2007, 03:13 AM

OK - these lines were added to the sky2 driver [../linux.../driver/net/sky2.c

Quote:

#ifdef broken
/* This device causes data corruption problems that are not resolved */
{ PCI_DEVICE(PCI_VENDOR_ID_MARVELL, 0x4364) }, /* 88E8056 */
#endif

between 2.6.20.10 and 2.6.21

I just modified this driver in the 2.6.21.1 kernel by adding the line
#define broken sja
as the first line.

I am currently using this driver with the "broken" chipset to send this post; and I've been beating on it pretty hard for half an hour with no problems. I suspect the problem is confined to some special case, perhaps an interaction with a specific phy or something. It is apparently not causing any problems on my Asus P5B-deluxe mobo.

# uname -a
Linux lycoperdon 2.6.21.1-sja #4 SMP Tue May 1 03:32:43 EDT 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82P965/G965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 2833 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HB (ICH8) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7600 GT] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Unknown device 4364 (rev 12)
04:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
04:04.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 14)
# lspci -nn
00:00.0 0600: 8086:29a0 (rev 02)
00:01.0 0604: 8086:29a1 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 0403: 8086:284b (rev 02)
00:1c.0 0604: 8086:283f (rev 02)
00:1c.5 0604: 8086:2849 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:2830 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:2831 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 0c03: 8086:2832 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 0c03: 8086:2833 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 0c03: 8086:2836 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 0604: 8086:244e (rev f2)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:2810 (rev 02)
00:1f.2 0106: 8086:2821 (rev 02)
00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:283e (rev 02)
01:00.0 0300: 10de:0391 (rev a1)
02:00.0 0200: 11ab:4364 (rev 12)
04:03.0 0c00: 104c:8023
04:04.0 0200: 11ab:4320 (rev 14)
# lsmod | grep sky
sky2 54920 0
# ip link show eth1
2: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:18:f3:68:a6:23 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

shortwh · 05-01-2007, 09:13 AM

As PCIe can get very unhappy about overclocking, is there a chance that the people having trouble or overclocking the PCIe bus and not realizing it? Or maybe Gigabyte or others have trace problems? I also have the Asus P5B Deluxe and I have "hammered" this chip without problems. 70+MB/s sustained in and out with connections to 2 different end points without a crash. I will be leaving this driver in for my 2.6.21.1 kernel. Thanks to all who left comments.