[Xen-users] Xen 3.1 + CentOS 5 + HP ProLiant G5 = DomU packet drops

[Pezza <mario.beccia@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I've a Xen server (Xen 3.1 compiled from sources [stable downloaded last
wed...], CentOS 5 as the host OS, HP Proliant G5 6Gb ram with Broadcom
NetXtreme 2) with 4 guests, each running Windows 2003 just installed, with
nothing else.
Network is configured with the default bridging script, no changes. I'm
using 1 network card only for the moment.
All guests run apparently fine, but if I try to download from a server on
the same subnet and/or from a share on the same subnet, I get strange
corruption errors.

Poking around, I found out that all the guests are experiencing packet drops
on their network cards: even just after booting the guest, with the guest os
completely idle, I can see from xm top that the guest network card is
dropping packets.

Googling around, I've found some similar situations and thus I tried:
 * updating the network card drivers: I'm now using version 1.5.xxx
downloaded from the broadcom website and installed following instructions
found on this mailing list
 * enabling IP forwarding in the host kernel (instead of using the
automatically generated rules in the forward chain in iptables)
 * disabling the management mode on the card firmware, following
instructions found on this mailing list
 * using the ne2k_pci driver in the guest instead of the default
 * trying different vm schemes (1, 2 or 3 VM at a time instead of 4)
 * pinning Dom0 to one CPU and the guest on another (as suggested somewhere
on this mailing list)

None of the above fixed the problem.

I don't know what else could I do to fix this.

Is this situation normal? Is using a PV enabled host/guest system the only
solution?

Thanks in advance,

                                                              M.
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/Xen-3.1-%2B-CentOS-5-%2B-HP-ProLiant-G5-%3D-DomU-packet-drops-tf4784484.html#a13687654
Sent from the Xen - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users