epic100 driver has problems

[Derrik Pates]

I'm working on setting up a netbooting system to automatically clone off
nodes for a Beowulf cluster by popping in a disk, booting from a server
(the cluster head node), copying files from a readonly NFS share, and so
forth. I've gotten a boot disk that works with some NICs, but many of the
systems we will be using use a card with a recent SMC chipset (lspci
identifies it as an 83C170QF rev 06). The Linux epic100 driver works fine
for the card in question, but the epic100 driver from the netboot codebase
does not. If I try to access the network, I get errors like:

   OOPS, Something wrong with transmitter. status=8000

and

   eth_transmit: Unable to transmit. status=8000. Resetting...

But it never resets, just sits in this loop. Ctrl-C once or twice will get
it to stop, but it never succeeds in netbooting, or even getting an
address via DHCP (works on another system with a 3Com card).

So, what other useful info can I provide? Does anyone know what's going
on? Is there maybe a newer driver in the netboot codebase? I'm open to
suggestions.

Derrik Pates      |   Sysadmin, Douglas School   |    #linuxOS on EFnet
address@hidden |     District (dsdk12.net)    |    #linuxOS on OPN