Anyone else running the latest RH 9 kernel update on an NForce-based system? Not NForce2, but the original one. I updated the kernel last night on my home system. Most of the 3rd party kernel modules seem to work fine. Binary ALSA packages from Freshrpms (kernel-module-alsa-0.9.4-fr2_2.4.20_18.9.athlon.rpm and the rest of them) installed flawlessly and work fine. The official NVidia driver for the embedded GeForce2 compiled and works fine. But then i ran into major trouble. The NForce specific drivers are doing something very screwy. I'm not using the sound part of the driver, as i disabled the embedded sound long ago and i'm using an Audigy2 with ALSA. But i was using (mark the past tense) the network part of it, with the embedded NIC. Well, with the latest RH 9 kernel update (2.4.20-18.9), the official NForce network driver makes the system so slow, it's unusable. With the previous RH 9 kernels all was fine; i didn't try ALL of the other updates though (only the original RH 9 kernel and the 2.4.20-9). It's actually weird, if the driver is configured optimized for CPU, the system takes long pauses (like 10 seconds) during which nothing happens (it's solid frozen). The pauses seem to be triggered by heavy disk activity (like when booting up), but they also appear more rarely during the idle state. If the driver is optimized for throughput, the pauses are "softer", meaning that the system doesn't halt completely, it just crawls like a 386/12MHz. Between pauses, all is fine. The NIC works fine per se (except during the pauses, of course, when nothing works or works very slowly). There is no indication in top regarding abnormal system load or anything. If i disable the driver (comment out "alias eth0 nvnet" in modules.conf then reboot) the system works fine. The NForce driver was rebuilt by myself from src.rpm, (using "--target athlon") since NVidia doesn't provide a binary for the latest RH 9 kernel update. Lucky me, i had a spare Intel Pro/100, which i installed immediately (and disabled the embedded NIC in the BIOS), and this one works very well. I know it's not a Red Hat problem per se, i was just curious if i'm the only one experiencing the trouble (i can't quite believe that). I'll probably bring this to the attention of the NVidia programmers too (which previously have done a great job of fixing silly issues, in my experience). -- Florin Andrei Oracle: I'd ask you to sit down, but you're not going to anyway. And don't worry about the vase. Neo: What vase? ... Oracle: That vase.
