Re: "transmit timed out" from kernel 2.6.19 on?

On 3 Mar 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.networking, in article
<1172984031.217986.65490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, john.coppens@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:

I have kernel 2.6.18.1 running very stably - it runs for days without
problem. I wanted to upgrade to 2.6.19 or .20, and have similar
problems with both. After a few hours of work, eth1 stops working,
and no amount of rmmod or ifconfig can restart it. Until now,
the only way I found, was to reboot.

Are these kernels that you've compiled yourself, rather than kernels
from some distribution? From kernel.org:

[compton ~]$ grep 2.6.18[.]*[0-9]*.tar.gz$ temp/new/kernel/2.6-ls | cut
-b44- | column
Sep 20 03:56 linux-2.6.18.tar.gz Dec 02 00:21 linux-2.6.18.5.tar.gz
Oct 14 06:01 linux-2.6.18.1.tar.gz Dec 17 00:28 linux-2.6.18.6.tar.gz
Nov 04 01:43 linux-2.6.18.2.tar.gz Feb 20 06:52 linux-2.6.18.7.tar.gz
Nov 19 03:38 linux-2.6.18.3.tar.gz Feb 23 23:55 linux-2.6.18.8.tar.gz
Nov 29 19:38 linux-2.6.18.4.tar.gz
[compton ~]$ grep 2.6.19[.]*[0-9]*.tar.gz$ temp/new/kernel/2.6-ls | cut
-b44- | column
Nov 29 22:20 linux-2.6.19.tar.gz Feb 20 06:51 linux-2.6.19.4.tar.gz
Dec 11 19:40 linux-2.6.19.1.tar.gz Feb 24 00:29 linux-2.6.19.5.tar.gz
Jan 10 19:50 linux-2.6.19.2.tar.gz Mar 03 01:06 linux-2.6.19.6.tar.gz
Feb 05 16:36 linux-2.6.19.3.tar.gz Mar 03 05:29 linux-2.6.19.7.tar.gz
[compton ~]$ grep 2.6.20[.]*[0-9]*.tar.gz$ temp/new/kernel/2.6-ls | cut
-b44- | column
Feb 04 18:59 linux-2.6.20.tar.gz Feb 20 06:49 linux-2.6.20.1.tar.gz
[compton ~]$

Net card is a Winbond W89C940, works perfectly under 2.6.18.1.
Driver is ne2k-pci/8390.
The messages I found in dmesg are:

NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed out
eth1: Tx timed out, lost interrupt? TSR=0x3, ISR=0x3, t=282.

Some of the ChangeLog files are getting larger than the original 2.0.0
kernel tarball, but have you looked through them? I've seen something
recently (maybe the past ten days?) about dynamic interrupt problems, but
can't remember where. What does the interrupts list look like before/after
the problem? It may also have been in the ChangeLogs for the 2.6.21
candidates as well (/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/) - sorry I can't be
more specific.

Old guy
.