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

[Ivan Porro <pivan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

I've the same problem on xen 3.1, PE 1950 server (on dom0 I've broadcom 
nextreme driver updated to 1.5) I'm experiencing a strange behaviour.
On windows HVM (2003 and XP) I don' have problem via the built-in VNC 
server but, if I connect via RDP (terminal server), after few minutes of 
connection, the terminal server client freeze (on windows and on linux) 
and the HVM does not respond. After about half minute of panic, it go 
back working just to freeze again after few minutes.
It freeze even if from a VNC session on Win2k3 server machine I open a 
terminal server to the very same server... the RDP session crashes, 
while the VNC is perfect.
I need to virtualize a server for terminal server access so I cannot 
rely on VNC only...
During the freeze, if I click a button (i.e. sw installation on windows) 
it "remember" the event and as soon as the system unlock it execute the 
requested commands.
during the worst freeze I've experienced my laptop (Ubuntu 7.10) became 
totally locked too... to complete this e-mail I had to CTR+ALT+F1 switch 
to text console and kill tsclient.
The only useful info I found is:

SLC4_HVM
Net0 RX:   0bytes        0pkts        0err    23759drop
TX:        0bytes        0pkts        0err        0drop

WIN2003SRV_HVM
Net0 RX:   0bytes        0pkts        0err    23757drop
TX:        0bytes        0pkts        0err        0drop

but I don't know how to further investigate in and relate it to other 
system hw/sw components. Network inside the VM seems working good.
I'll google around until new advice :)

ivan

Pezza wrote:
> 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.

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