eth0: too many iterations (16) in nv_nic_irq.

From: Jesper Krogh
Date: Sun Apr 05 2009 - 04:20:00 EST


I have a 2.6.29 kernel which fills up the "dmesg-buffer" with these:

eth0: too many iterations (16) in nv_nic_irq.

$ dmesg | grep -c "too many iterations"
1986

I have seen the commit below.. is the fix just to set the limit to 30 instead? or is there a "real bug" underneath?

commit dccd547e2bf2c01a13c967ae03a705338394fad6
Author: Joe Korty <joe.korty@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed Oct 29 14:22:16 2008 -0700

forcdeth: increase max_interrupt_work

This eliminates the following often-generated warning from my 64 bit
Opteron SMP test stand:

eth0: too many iterations (6) in nv_nic_irq

According to the web, the problem is that the forcedeth driver has a
too-low value for max_interrupt_work. Grepping the kernel I see that
forcedeth has the second lowest value of all ethernet drivers (ie, 6).
Most are in the 20-40 range. So this patch increases this a bit, from 6
to 15 (at 15 forcedeth becomes the driver with third-lowest
max_interrupt_work value).

My test stand, which used to print out the above warnings repetitively
whenever it was under heavy net load, no longer does so.

Signed-off-by: Joe Korty <joe.korty@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Ayaz Abdulla <aabdulla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jeff@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@xxxxxxxxxx>
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