Re: Purpose of the Internal PHYs for NICs

[Saad Kadhi <saad.kadhi@neurocom.com>]

On 01 Aug 2001 10:59:47 -0400, Jason Wright wrote:
> At 01 Aug 2001 14:01:04 +0200,
> Saad Kadhi wrote:
> > 
> > Hi there,
> > 
> > Can anyone tell me what are the "internal phys" as shown in the kernel
> > and the purpose of these? I looked up the information in the FAQ and
> > through man options(4) but to no avail. And since I am having trouble
> > with  a RealTek 8139 on a server running OBSD 2.9-STABLE with a custom
> > kernel (in which amphy + rlphy are commented)...
> > 
> Internal PHYsical layer device.  That's the device driver for the part
> of the chip that decides whether to run 10 or 100mb/s and/or full/half
> duplex.  What problem are you have with 8139?
The problematic box is running as a DNS server (primary). From time to
time, the secondary server fails to get the zone files. So I connected
into the box using SSH. And I noticed some weird behavior:
1. Typing commands that do not output a lot of stuff works fine: ps,
netstat -rn, pwd, ls (on a small directory)
2. Commands that output a lot of stuff make the connection hang
(sometimes it gives me back the prompt after 2mins+, sometimes it just
dies): ls -lR /, vi sendmail.cf...etc
3. Connecting through SSH on the secondary (which is on the same network
for the moment) and running commands 1. & 2. works fine. 
4. Adding rlphy/ukphy to the kernel doesn't solve the problem
5. No problem encountered at all when the RealTek on the primary is
replaced by a 3COM 905B-TX

The two boxes are quite similar (same custom kernel, OBSD 2.9-STABLE)
but the NICs are different. On the primary server, it is a RealTek 8139
(added after timeouts on the onboard Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100+ fxp
...any clues?). On the secondary it is an Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100+
(this one doesn't make weird timeouts). BTW, the RealTek runs fine on a
Debian 2.2r3 box.

Are there known issues with the RealTek 8139 on OpenBSD ? Also, I
thought that there was some thread bef4 about the Intel EtherExpress Pro
10/100 timeouts... any pointers?

TIA

-- 
/saad
nodisclaimer