Server getting error after doing distro upgrade: tg3_stop_block timed out

Question

im running ubuntu on a HP Server Blade ProLiant BL25p G1

after doing distro upgrade to oneiric im geting dpammed whit these messages on terminal.

if i turn of the eth0 interface with sudo ifconfig eth0 downi can se what i write.

this is what is at end of my dmesg

and if i start in recovery mode i get this message

if i reboot the mashine in older kernel it works just fine, any suggjestion how i can fix this?

Answer 1

Well, not to state the obvious, but looks like a kernel bug. There are similar reports in launchpad, bugzilla, arch ...

Ubuntu (most recent) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/545334

It seems to come up with a variety of network cards, and I did not find a solution.

Probably the most helpful bug report was here, on Arch

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/19369

No solution for you , but a nice list of the various bug reports across the various distros.

I would advise you file a bug report with kernel.org

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/

for kernel.org guidelines see :

http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_code_bugs.html

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html

In the meantime continue to use the older kernel and see if the next kernel fixes the bug.

Answer 2

In the Launchpad Bug reports https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1005699, see item #24 for the fix. The discussion talks about a tigon3 driver problem in the kernel. The 3.0.24 and below tree had this error but as Ubuntu now has support for a 3.0.25-40 kernel the bug has been fixed. Item #20 talks the details of how this problem was discovered by working back from the development kernels 3.4, 3.3, and 3.2 and how it was discovered what the tg3_stop_block_error means. It is a problem with TSO. TSO stands for TCP Segmentation offload.

What happened in the pre 3.0.25 kernel is explained by Matt Carlson here

On the earliest TSO capable devices, TSO was accomplished through firmware. The TSO cannot coexist with ASF management firmware though. The tg3 driver determines whether or not ASF is enabled by calling tg3_get_eeprom_hw_cfg(), which checks a particular bit of NIC memory. Commit dabc5c670d3f86d15ee4f42ab38ec5bd2682487d, entitled "tg3: Move TSO_CAPABLE assignment", accidentally moved the code that determines TSO capabilities earlier than the call to tg3_get_eeprom_hw_cfg(). As a consequence, the driver was attempting to determine TSO capabilities before it had all the data it needed to make the decision. This patch fixes the problem by revisiting and reevaluating the decision after tg3_get_eeprom_hw_cfg() is called.

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade should do the trick.