Re: High DPC Use and a Method to Reboot a network card?

IMH <i.hawley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I didn't even read all that...

I'm grateful for the help, but if you're going to be like that please don't
bother. I am not one of your customers. I am a peer and I expect there is
knowledge I have you might need one day, and even if that isn't the case, it
will be the case for someone out there. Do you want *them* to poke fun at
your ignorance? You know stuff; that's why I'm asking people in this forum.
I don't think it's the place to get snotty because I don't know to post more
specifics. If I knew, would I be asking?

You don't get the point. It's not about ignorance. I'm not expecting
you to know all about driver internals or the various and features of
gigabit ethernet chipsets. I'm not calling you an idiot for not being
an expert in the field of networking. (If anything, *I'm* the idiot
for becoming an expert. I mean, look at what it's got me.) What I *am*
saying is that since you're not an expert, it's vital that you preserve
as many details as possible when consulting the experts so that you
don't accidentally send them down a blind alley.

I think Stephan's words (and thank him for them) are very true. I know
very, very little about driver writing. I know a lot about other things;
such is the way of the world. In my ignorance I have come here and asked for
some help.

And to continue the car anaolgy my mechanic doesn't take the p*ss out of me
when I describe the fault badly, he asks *politely* to see the car... you
might have done the same with regard to the NIC model numbers, chipsets,
etc... Perhaps even sagely informed me that I might be comparing apples and
apples and as such might discover them to both be... erm apples.

The whole car/mechanic analogy doesn't really work well in this case
anyway, because you have to actually bring the car to the mechanic, which
gives him a chance to analyze it first hand. That makes finding the
problem much easier. But that's often not how it works with troubleshooting
computer problems, which is frequently done via e-mail, or telephone, or
forum postings. In those cases, you're dependent on other people to relay
information to you because you never have the opportunity to see the
failing system, and that complicates matters significantly.

Again, this is not about what you know. It's about how you think.
I don't expect you to know that the 3c2000 and the D-Link 530T both
use a Marvell chipset, and that Marvell uses the same driver code base
for both. However I do expect you to actually say exactly what the
new card is, so that someone who does know can tell you: "hey, just
a minute: you're not really testing what you think you're testing."

When you thought to yourself "hmm, I switched the card, and I still
see the same problem," you drew a conclusion based on raw data. Your
next step should have been to relay that exact same raw data here, so
that others could see it and draw their own conclusions. This is what
I try to do when I find myself in the same position. There's plenty
of crap I don't know, and when I'm stuck, I gather up all the data I
have and try to seek out someone smarter than me, and I try to present
as much context as I can about the problem. This is both for their
benefit and mine, because it forces me to *think*. I remind myself that
the people I'm about to pester haven't been watching over my shoulder,
which means I have to describe the problem with as much background and
detail as I can, otherwise they'll just be confused. In the process,
I usually have to go back and re-examine the problem from the
beginning, with a slightly different perspective, and sometimes I'll
discover something I overlooked the first time around, which turns out
to be the missing piece of the puzzle. If end up being that lucky
(and yes, a large part of this is more luck than skill), I won't have
to pester anyone at all: I'll have solved the problem on my own. If not,
at least I've done my homework.

Now, the question is, should I have to tell you that you need to
provide these details? Is the model of the card such an esoteric and
obscure piece of information that I have to take special steps to
insure that you don't forget to tell it to me?

I'm not really certain, but my opinion is: I don't think so. On another
day, I might not have remembered that D-Link also sells gigE cards with
Marvell chipsets. But given the part number, I would have gone out and
looked it up and realized you'd just exchanged one Marvell card for
another: I wouldn't have needed to rely on my sometimes faulty memory.
And this information is not esoteric or obscure: it's written on the
box and on the card. You may not know about network controllers,
but you do know how to read. Should I have to remind you to read?

You have knowledge, clearly on this subject but *maybe* you should use it to
help unconditionally, instead of vaunt your knowledge over less informed
individuals from some lofty place. If helping annoys or frustrates you (as
clearly your job appears to do) then don't bother; I think you'd be happier
for it by the sounds of your opening rant.

I don't have a choice in the matter. As you say, I know stuff, and they
pay me to use what I know. It used to be, when I was young and stupid,
I would try to answer questions cheerfully and politely no matter how
simple or silly or they seemed, even when I didn't get paid for it. I
tried to solve everyone's problems in spite of the lack of detail they
would provide, thinking that after a while people would learn to ask new
and more intelligent questions. Except it didn't work out that way. I kept
getting asked the same questions over and over. Year after year. I'd get
the same vague, detail-free problem reports and have to go through the
same tedious information extraction process to get to the bottom of
things.

Exactly how polite am I supposed to be? Should I give everyone a pass
and encourage this steady errosion of common sense, or should I remind
people not to waste that incredible chunk of grey matter between their
ears? Thinking is one of the most amazing things we can do as human
beings. It's a tremendous gift. All too often though, I see it being
squandered. And it bugs me.

Can you honestly say it wouldn't bug you too?

p.s. I'm sorry this is off topic and please feel free to flame on in return.
I've said my bit in response to your post and if you rant away at whoever
then you will merely be reinforcing the above; I won't need to add a thing.
Thanks again for your help.

I'm not flaming you, but I'm also not letting you get away that easily.
If you choose not to give due consideration to what I've said, then the
only thing being reinforced is your desire not to learn. Harsh or not,
I'm not wrong, no matter how much you might like me to be.

The only thing that disappoints me about all this is that now I'll
probably never find out if I was right about the damn Marvell driver
being the cause of your problem.

-Bill

"Bill Paul" <wpaul@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OGm2$zicGHA.4932@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Stephan Wolf [MVP] <stewo68@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[off-topic mode on]

This guy is programming an application that uses information provided
by a network card/driver. He is apparently not (very) familiar with
driver programming or hardware details. Much like I can drive my car
without having to know anything about the internals of my car's
machine.

The whole spirit and purpose of forums like this one is to help each
other, not SHOUT or make fun of someone elses perplexity.

Thanks, Stephan
[off-topic mode off]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong.

I have to deal with support issues more often than I'd like, and my
number one peeve is customers (or even support staff) who don't pay
enough attention to detail. I'm not talking about pushing them out
of their limited realm of expertise, either: I'm talking about really
simple stuff. Like, what OS version is the customer using? What
CPU are they running it on? What kind of networking adapter(s) do they
have? Either this information has an immediate bearing on the problem
at hand, or I'm going to need it later anyway when I sit down to try
to reproduce it. You'd think people would know by now to provide
all of this information up front, but trust me, they don't.

Now.

You may not be required to know how your car works in order to drive
it, but when it breaks, you _ARE_ required to pay enough attention to
detail so that when you take it to the mechanic to fix it, you can
provide an accurate description of what's wrong. If all you say is
"sometimes the engine makes a funny noise and belches smoke," it could
take the mechanic weeks to figure out what's causing the problem. It's
possible he might not be able to reproduce it at all. "Oh," you say,
when he tells you he can't find anything wrong, "I forgot to mention:
it only happens when I go past 50 mph. Does that matter?" At this point,
you'll be lucky if all the mechanic does is shout at you.

This is not a question of being unfamiliar with the technology. It's a
question of alertness and attention to detail. In some cases, sadly,
it can even be a question of reading comprehension. There is a vast
difference between saying "I tried a different card, and the problem
persists" and saying "I tried card model Blah from Vendor Foo and
the problem persists." He was alert enough to provide the make and
model of the first card, but dropped the ball when it came to positively
identifying the second. (And I don't care how screwed up the retail NIC
market is: you're never allowed to identify a device just by saying
"it's a DLink card." When you go to the shelf and see a huge pile of
DLink products staring back at you, it should become immediately obvious
that they don't make just one card.)

If the idea here is to help each other, everyone has a responsibility
to he equally helpful. The people who ask questions have to be every bit
as attentive and conscientious as the people who try to answer them.
And I'm not going to coddle people who choose to abdicate that
responsibility.

-Bill

--
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu
wpaul@#$(%($windriver###!#com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
"Ignorance may be bliss, but delusion is ecstasy!" -Perki
=============================================================================

---
Bill Paul wrote:
[..]
*sigh*

You know we can't see the card from here, right? So if all you tell
us is that it's "a DLink card" that's not going to tell us a damn thing
about what kind of chip it really has on it.

You could have at least told us the model number.

Or... is it really likely that two NIC manufactureres have fallen
foul
problem!?

It's very likely. Was it this card?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?image=33-127-134-05.JPG

If so, then congratulations: all you did was buy another Marvell-based
NIC, so you haven't really tested anything new at all, and you've been
wasting your time. Don't you love the retail computer market? I don't.
I hate it with a passion. I hate it because it's specifically geared
towards people like you, you can't tell one card from another anyway.

Go and get a TOTALLY DIFFERENT card. With a DIFFERENT CHIPSET. If you
can't tell what chipset it is, then ask someone to help you find out.
Here's a hint: DON'T GET ONE WITH A BIG GIANT LETTER 'M' ON IT!
Better still, learn how to check the PCI vendor/device ID.

Get one of these instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833106123

Or one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833156139

Or one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833181009

I'll bet you a quarter the problem doesn't show up with these. And
next time you write, tell us EXACTLY which one you got so we don't
have to guess.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated...

You really don't want to know what I'm thinking right now.

-Bill

=============================================================================
-Bill Paul (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of
Unix-Fu
wpaul@#$(%($windriver###!#com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
"Ignorance may be bliss, but delusion is ecstasy!" -Perki
=============================================================================



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