Baslinux mailing list

[qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org]

James Miller (office) wrote:
> 
> Well, I have a card with the Intel 82557 chip, but 
> it's not onboard, but is a separate pci NIC.  So far 
> it seems to work fine with the Slack 7.1 eepro100 module.  
> Should I switch over to the one you're providing,

I'm a great believer in: "if it ain't broke, don't
fix it."  Unless you get problems, just leave it as 
it is.  However, here are some comments I've seen:

>From the Compaq Server Information page for Linux
-------------------------------------------------
If you are using the eepro100 driver, you should 
change over to the e100 driver from Intel. It seems 
that the eepro100 is not as stable as the e100. 

Comment on the eepro100 mailing list
------------------------------------
I have a linux box here running 2.2.16 and got these 
strange timeouts just like others on the list, too. 
I get timeouts between 3 and 20 times a day, always 
on eth2. About once a week the box stops working at all. 

>From http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/eepro100_e100.html
------------------------------------------------------
Problems include:  Seemingly unmotivated loss of network 
connectivity during normal system operation.  
The eepro100 driver seems to load properly and configuring 
the provided ethernet interfaces via ifconfig works without 
errors.  Nevertheless, the ethernet interfaces provide no 
network connectivity (e.g. ping to remote hosts fails).
(rare) Loading the eepro100 driver module hangs the system. 

>From a Beowolf mailing list
---------------------------
Got the infamous "Transmit timed out" and "restart the 
transmitter" issue with both eepro100 1.06 and 1.09 drivers, 
under both kernel 2.2.10ac12 and 2.2.12-20.  Although the 
2.2.12-20 kernel + 1.09 eepro100 combo reduced the occurances, 
they still would creep up in increasing number the longer the 
system is up. 

>From a Toshiba Linux discussion group
-------------------------------------
eepro100 = slow traffic (http) seems fine, but transferring 
iso images or rsyncing directories leads to warning messages, 
many errors and high collision rate.
Switching to Intel e100 module suppress *all* problems.

thanks to everyone who suggested using the e100 driver rather 
than eepro100. It does appear to be more reliable for me
(and perhaps faster too). Note that the hangs with eepro100 
only seem to occur with *certain* connections - some office 
jacks but not others, and my cable modem - and usually only 
after intense blocks of network traffic.