Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Sat, 2013-07-27 at 01:02 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote: >> On Fri, 2013-07-26 at 12:47 -0400, Neil Horman wrote: >> > atl1c uses netdev_alloc_skb to refill its rx dma ring, but that call makes no >> > guarantees about the suitability of the memory for use in DMA. As a result >> > we've gotten reports of atl1c drivers occasionally hanging and needing to be >> > reset: >> > https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54021 >> > >> > Fix this by modifying the call to use the internal version __netdev_alloc_skb, >> > where you can set the gfp_mask explicitly to include GFP_DMA. >> >> This is a really bad idea. GFP_DMA means allocation from the ISA DMA >> region (< 16 MB). pci_map_single() takes care of allocating a bounce >> buffer if necessary. >> >> Ben. >> >> > Tested by two reporters in the above bug, who have the hardware to validate it. >> > Both report immediate cessation of the problem with this patch > [...] > > So perhaps the chip somehow fails to support a full 32-bit address > (which is the current DMA mask), though given that there are 64 address > bits in RX descriptors this seems unlikely. And the most likely result > of that would be memory corruption, not a stall. > > Alternately, perhaps more likely, there's something wrong with the > driver's error handling. If atl1_alloc_rx_buffer() fails then the RX > queue could run dry. Depending on how the hardware is designed, that > could result in a complete RX stall (no RX buffers available => no RX > completions => no attempt to allocate more RX buffers). > > Maybe your change makes it less likely for atl1_alloc_rx_buffer() to > fail. On a modern PC the (ISA) DMA zone is basically unused whereas > bounce buffers might be more contended. Did you try adding some logging > for failure of pci_map_single()? > > Ben. Just to add a little bit more context (and hopefully not noise), I started seeing this issue on 3.7. Bisection resulted on the following first bad commit: 69b08f6 net: use bigger pages in __netdev_alloc_frag Reverting this commit (and e5e6730 "skbuff: Move definition of NETDEV_FRAG_PAGE_MAX_SIZE") solved the problem. Note also that I'm seeing this issue on a 32 bits system (64 bits isn't supported). This initially made me think the problem could be related with this as 69b08f6 log explicitly refers to 32/64 bit archs. But I failed to find any obvious issue with the patch. Cheers, -- Luis -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html