[ltp] Experience from updating RH 6.2 to RH 7.0 on TP 770X

[Friedemann Baitinger]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Burt Silverman wrote:

> Friedemann:
> I don't think this should cause more Transmitter busys. The problem in the
> code is that if an adapter check interrupt occurs (meaning that hardware
> somewhere isn't perfect, either in the adapter or on the ring), we are then
> printing out the wrong check code. So you cannot take the code we print and
> go to the TR manual and see what it means, with the current bug. This part
> of the code has effectively not changed from the older driver.
> 
> One thing that did change is that the code originally would rerun the init
> routine. I changed that to run init only once (rather than every time you
> open). That is my understanding of how a well structured driver should be
> written. The downside is that if your adapter fails to init, you will have
> to unload and reload the module (e.g., /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart is a
> good way). Perhaps this is why you notice more failures.
> 
> I'm hoping that your Transmitter busys are just either during startup, or
> else a transient during normal operation that doesn't interfere other than
> printing a message. The latter could be related to the adapter logging
> mechanism, if lots of ring status changes occur quickly -- I'm just
> speculating rather than speaking from an actual experience.

Based on the experience I have now with linux-2.2.17, pcmcia-3.1.21 plus
ibmtr 2.1.18 I have decided to fall back to the original code as it
comes with linux-2.2.17 and pcmcia-3.2.21. In 1 out of 2 days when I
come into the office (obviously the Thinkpad still running, just
disconnected from my Ethernet at home) and I plug the Token Ring card I
get the transmitter busy. The bad thing is that the /etc/init.d/pcmcia
restart does _not_ help. Today I was not even able to power down the
system anymore. Neither did /etc/init.c/pcmcia stop work, nor pulling 
the card. Even after pulling the card I got the transmitter busy and I
finally had to use the electrical power off. Needless to say that I had
to undergo the timeconsuming filesystem check afterwards. In essence I
lost 30 minutes.

As I said I will fallback to the original code knowing about its
deficiencies, for instance, that I can never hot-pull the card. I have
lived with these deficiencies for more than a year and it was no problem
for the machine to reach uptimes of weeks.

I'm sorry to report such bad news but that's just the experience I made
during the last 2 weeks.

- -- 
Friedemann Baitinger      fb@baiti.net       http://baiti.net/fb/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE6G4H38ZparKdkcvIRAmScAJ9rNnzp9H0zAOcrKU70KzjwlBDnfACfdjKo
DjKtc89YEaWNrJBdtqi/wyM=
=VuX/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

----- The Linux ThinkPad mailing list -----
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://www.bm-soft.com/~bm/tp_mailing.html