[Click] Kernel and Intel Driver Versions and Click Patches

[Tom Gibson]

Hi All,

I'm not sure what versions of things I should be using and what versions
others use.

For my Kernel I'm using the latest Click Kernel patch with 2.6.24.7 64bit on
a dual E5410 Xeon server.  My main (only) issue right now is that I get
Kernel lockups (system freezes and keyboard LEDs just blink) too often.  It
happens randomly when the system is idle sometimes.  Also it happens
everytime I try and transmit data too close to line rate (4x 1Gig) using the
fast UDP source element.  I'm thinking maybe it's a bug that's fixed in a
newer Kernel version.  I'm researching debuging this sort of thing over the
serial port, so I'll probably have more details soon.

For my E1000 driver I use the version that comes in the 2.6.24.7 Kernel w/
NAPI enabled (no click polling mode patch).  I also tried compiling the
latest stable E1000E driver (no click polling mode patches) and still got
the Kernel freeze when transmitting too fast.  I ran into issues trying to
compile the patched E1000 driver in my Click directory.  First it complained
about the Makefile modifying CFLAGS, so I updated it to be more like the
Makefile of the current E1000 driver.  That fixed that problem, but it still
failed to compile complaining about unknown fields in some of the main
network struct's.

I saw the latest stable Intel NIC drivers use an updated driver called
E1000E for newer PCIe cards.  Would it be a good idea to use this new driver
and migrate the Click polling mode patches to it?  How does NAPI support in
the Intel drivers relate to Click's custom polling mode patches?

I haven't worked with patches in Linux before besides applying them.  I'm
not sure how difficult it would be and what a good way would be to migrate
the Click supplied patches to the newer versions of the Kernel and Intel NIC
drivers.  Does anyone have some advice on how to go about this?

Thanks,

Tom