bnx2 network interfaces may not function correctly on IBM POWER7 in RHEL5

Updated -

Issue

  • The iscsi init script automatically loads the bnx2i driver, which may trigger a bug and prevent network cards which use the bnx2 driver in IBM POWER7 from functioning correctly.
  • If you encounter this issue, messages similar to the following will be seen: 

bnx2 0003:01:00.1: pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting failed 0xfffffffb

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  • IBM POWER7 system
  • bnx2 network driver in use

Resolution

  • This issue is resolved by updating to kernel 2.6.18-238.9.1 or later.

  • You may need to first disable the iscsi and iscsid services and reboot the system to regain network functionality in order to retrieve the errata kernel.

    chkconfig iscsi off
chkconfig iscsid off

Root Cause

  • The bnx2 driver's page tables were not set up properly on Big Endian machines, causing extended error handling (EEH) errors on PowerPC machines. With this update, the page tables are properly set up and a system crash no longer occurs in the aforementioned case.
  • When the iscsid init script is started, it performs a modprobe of bnx2i because that driver compliments the bnx2x/bnx and cnic modules.

Comments