Description of ie0/le0 Error Messages

From: Wayne Little (rwl@ee.umr.edu)
Date: Mon May 14 1990 - 08:54:58 CDT


Here's the description of ie0/le0 console error messages that I promised in
my recent posting RE: a summary of available network troubleshooting info.
I got this from an anonymous Sun engineer when I was fishing for ethernet
troubleshooting info. I don't recall seeing it in either sun-nets or
sun-spots-digest before, but my apologies if this is "old-news." Hope its
helpful to you.

-- Wayne Little Internet: rwl@ee.umr.edu Phone: (314) 341-4546
USPS: Univ. of Missouri-Rolla, EE Dept., Rolla, MO 65401
"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones" Solomon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keywords: list of possible ie0/le0 problems

ie%d: Ethernet jammed
          Network activity has become so intense that sixteen
          successive transmission attempts failed, causing the
          82586 to give up on the current packet. Another possi-
          ble cause of this message is a noise source somewhere
          in the network, such as a loose transceiver connection.

ie%d: no carrier
          The 82586 has lost input to its carrier detect pin
          while trying to transmit a packet, causing the packet
          to be dropped. Possible causes include an open circuit
          somewhere in the network and noise on the carrier
          detect line from the transceiver.

ie%d: lost interrupt: resetting
          The driver and 82586 chip have lost synchronization
          with each other. The driver recovers by resetting
          itself and the chip.

ie%d: iebark reset
          The 82586 failed to complete a watchdog timeout command
          in the alloted time. The driver recovers by resetting
          itself and the chip.

ie%d: WARNING: requeueing
          The driver has run out of resources while getting a
          packet ready to transmit. The packet is put back on
          the output queue for retransmission after more
          resources become available.

ie%d: panic: scb overwritten
          The driver has discovered that memory that should
          remain unchanged after initialization has become cor-
          rupted. This error usually is a symptom of a bad 82586
          chip.

ie1: giant packet:
        a packet that was bigger than the maximum ethernet size came through on ie1 (max = 1518 bytes total). Obviously a bogus packet. Possible causes:
        noise in the 'quiet space' between packets, making 2 pkts look like 1,
        or too-small between-pkt gap: pkts have a minimum spacing between them. Jam two of them closer together than that and you have what looks like
        1 pkt. ENP or STP bits blown away: Start of Pkt or End of Pkt bits
        got munged. A non-Sun host not respecting ethernet packet size limit
        can send oversized packets and cause this problem.

[LE SPECIFIC):

le%d: transmitter frozen -- resetting
        A bug in the LANCE
             chip has caused the chip's transmitter section to stop. The
             driver has detected this condition and reinitialized the
             chip.

le%d: out of mbufs: output packet dropped
        The driver has
             run out of memory to use to buffer packets on output. The
             packet being transmitted at the time of occurrence is lost.
             This error is usually symptomatic of trouble elsewhere in
             the kernel.

le%d: stray transmitter interrupt
        The LANCE chip has signalled that it
        completed transmitting a packet but the
             driver has sent no such packet.

le%d: LANCE Rev C/D Extra Byte(s) bug; Packet dropped
        The LANCE chip's internal silo pointers have become misaligned.
             This error arises from a chip bug.

le%d: trailer error
        An incoming packet claimed to have a
             trailing header but did not.

le%d: runt packet
        An incoming packet's size was below the
             Ethernet minimum transmission size.

le%d: Receive buffer error - BUFF bit set in rmd
        This error ``should never happen,''
        as it occurs only in conjunction
             with a LANCE feature that the driver does not use.

le%d: Received packet with STP bit in rmd cleared
        This error ``should never happen,''
        as it occurs only in conjunc-
             tion with a LANCE feature that the driver does not use.

le%d: Received packet with ENP bit in rmd cleared
        This error ``should never happen,''
        as it occurs only in conjunc-
             tion with a LANCE feature that the driver does not use.

le%d: Transmit buffer error - BUFF bit set in tmd
        Excessive bus contention has prevented the LANCE chip from gathering
             packet contents quickly enough to sustain the packet's
             transmission over the Ethernet. The affected packet is
             lost.

le%d: Transmit late collision - Net problem?
        A packet collision has occurred after the channel's slot
        time has elapsed. This error usually indicates faulty hardware else-
             where on the net.

le%d: No carrier - transceiver cable problem?
        The LANCE chip has lost input to its carrier detect pin
        while trying to transmit a packet.

le%d: Transmit retried more than 16 times - net jammed
        Network activity has become so intense that sixteen successive
             transmission attempts failed, causing the LANCE chip to give
             up on the current packet.

le%d: missed packet
        The driver has dropped an incoming
             packet because it had no buffer space for it.

le%d: Babble error - sent a packet longer than the maximum length
        While transmitting a packet, the LANCE chip has
             noticed that the packet's length exceeds the maximum allowed
             for Ethernet. This error indicates a kernel bug.

le%d: Memory Error!
        Ethernet chip memory access timed out
             The LANCE chip timed out while trying to acquire the bus for
             a DVMA transfer.

le%d: Reception stopped
        Because of some other error, the
             receive section of the LANCE chip shut down and had to be
             restarted.

le%d: Transmission stopped
        Because of some other error, the
             transmit section of the LANCE chip shut down and had to be
             restarted.

le0: no upper interface for 802.3 packet
        This is probably due to the past install an old release
        (4.0 or earlier) of SunLink OSI or DNI. This is caused
        by something on your net broadcasting an 802.3 packet. Note that
        0060 and 0028 are not legal Ethernet packet types. This implies that
        they are 802.3 packets. The standard Ethernet driver thows these away;
        the one delivered with OSI and DNI contains code for handling 802.3
        packets. The message is generated when no upper layer client for this
        packet type is known.

[OTHER MISC/GENERAL ERRORS]

ie0 spurious interrupt
ie0 command not accepted
panic: iechkcca
        (see June STP, section #2)
        Iechkcca panic associated with hardware addressing and
        possible priority problems/conflicts. Review the following:

        1) Hardware problem
        2) identify cause (offending hardware)
        3) If Sun hardware, then
             -check board jumpers, switches, etc
             -swap board out
        4) If non-Sun board
             -we don't support
             -mention consulting help available

ie0: WARNING if_snd full
        This message probably shouldn't be passed on to the customer,
        because all it means is that the driver wants to send packets
        and the output queue filled up before all of them got out. Some
        of these type messages (like WARNING: ie0: requeueing) are being
        removed from newer releases because, although they indicate a high
        traffic situation, they are not necessarily fatal. This queue
        overflow can occur because of a hardware failure on the cpu or a
        coax or tranceiver problem, but if it's only happening once in awhile
        it probably is just indicating a busy net.

nd0: output error 55
        (related to above error ie0: WARNING if_snd full)
        comes from the next layer up in software and is a direct result of
        the first error. You were right about the /usr/include/sys/errno.h
        description of "no buffer space available". The driver got backed up
        when the output queue filled up, but the kernel was still allocating
        buffer space for more packets and just ran out of mbufs, resulting in
        this error.



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