Subject: [netatalk-admins] atalkd dies away / buy which NIC / I would like to know...

From: Lars <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:45:17 +0100

Admins,
as a long time subscriber I always wondered about this "conflict-free" and 
"emotionless" list. It was so disciplined. Clean. A bit to clean. Thank you 
for the "I would like to know..." thread - now I know that there are people 
on the other end!

*buy which NIC.
Thanks a lot to Sascha Knific for his "tip" with the Via-Rhine driver 
enabled NICs. It made my Netatalk server show up in the chooser again. Even 
though one of my networks has a server running the exact card 
(D-Link550BTX) without any obvious troubles. Nevertheless I would like to 
trash the card an put in another one. Any suggestions (I thought of a 
3com905BTX)?

*atalkd dies away.
Okay some of us have "old" servers running - mine was/is 
"netatalk-1_4b2+asun2_0a18_2_tar.gz" (running on SuSE6.0-6.2 - 
2.2.10kernel) - humin' without a flaw in a production environment. Now with 
a new DES-1024 D-Link switch in the net, I would like to "bump up" the network.
So I got "netatalk-1_4b2+asun2_1_3_tar.gz", compiled, wanted to start, BUT:
atalkd dies away right after I start it with my "/sbin/init.d/atalk". If I 
start atalkd with the "-d" switch, he/she stays up (sure debug goes to 
STDOUT). I can then do the "network register" etc. Even compiled atalkd 
with debug symbols, tracing the darn thing with ddd/gdb - but I just can't 
seem to find the problem.

Any ideas? Using the SuSE netatalk*.rpm is _not_ an option for me.

Anyways thank you all for your help _through_ this list!

regards,
Lars Georg Sander

PS: "Test-setup": AMDK6II400, 160RAM, Thunderlan10/100NIC (Compaq)

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From: Andrew Morgan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 12:22:06 -0800 (PST)

> trash the card an put in another one. Any suggestions (I thought of a 

I've had excellent luck with the 3Com 905B card.  I use it on two Redhat
5.2 + kernel 2.2.x machines at 100Mb full-duplex.  Three other 100Mb cards
have given me nothing but trouble with linux: Intel EEPro100, 3Com 509B
(go figure), and Netgear FA310TX.

	Andy

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From: Tony Grant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 09:22:30 +0100

> trash the card an put in another one. Any suggestions (I thought of a

Lucky you - mine didn't still fighting with the bas@&#ds.

Harry worte:

> Seriously, just get a DEC tulip based card - never had one iota of problems
> with those.

Would love to but the two cards cost me $45 and it is a SOHO network
where additional cash does tend to go to buying kids shoes and stuff
like that...

We will be biting the bullet and buying a printserver for the printer...

The thing that is puzzling me is where did it go wrong: kernel,
netatalk, NIC driver?

Cheers

Tony Grant

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From: Sean /The RIMBoy/ <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 11:10:19 -0600 (CST)

> where additional cash does tend to go to buying kids shoes and stuff

Have you looked at the offerings from Netgear?  You can get 10/100 PCI
cards for ~$20, 10 ISA for that price and even less.  

When in doubt, use a NE2000... sure the performance stinks, but they work.

Sean...

Everything you know is wrong,
Just forget the words and sing along.    --Weird Al
===========================================================================
home: www.rimboy.com/       @home firewall howto: www.rimboy.com/firewall/
===========================================================================
Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!

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From: chuck <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 16:27:13 -0800

> > where additional cash does tend to go to buying kids shoes and stuff
THat's what old scraps of leather are for...

> When in doubt, use a NE2000... sure the performance stinks, but they work.

When thinking about getting an ne2000, grab a staplegun and have at
your feet.  The OpenBSD list (and others) constantly get notes about "I
bought a US$10.00 ne2000 card (or clone) and I get slower throughput
that my modem (with PEP).  Oh yeah, it crashes a lot."   The Yugo of
network gear.   If I have to spend 1 hour debugging a card, thats more
exensive that getting a good card first.  I have a couple 3c509's from
olden days and a DEC Tulip card on the firewall (I share a DSL with the
downstairs folks, so they get a segment and I get to do some bandwidth
shaping).  Work uses Intel cards, mine works fine, haven't heard much
else from the rest of the co.

If you can't afford to do it well the first time, how can you afford
to do it over and over?

chuck

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From: Sean /The RIMBoy/ <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 21:43:13 -0600 (CST)

On Sat, 13 Nov 1999, chuck wrote:

> that my modem (with PEP).  Oh yeah, it crashes a lot." 

I would attribute it to BSD... I am running it under linux, have run it
under Win, and have had zero problems with a variety of manufacturers of
those cards.  I have never seen slower than modem performance on anything
(then again, I dont run BSD).  I did think I made it clear that if
performance matters, then consider something else.  Otherwise, they work.
With with just about anything (except BSD I guess).

>Work uses Intel cards, mine works fine, haven't heard much

I have had problems trying to get intel cards working properly under 98,
and I think they are overpriced.  Again, Netgear's offering has done well,
and if performance matters, I might then consider a 3com.  

Incidentally, the 3com cards generate these messages upon bootup:

Appletalk 0.17 for Linux NET3.035
eth0: 3c509 at 0x300 tag 1, 10baseT port, IRQ 10.
3c509.c:1.16 2/3/98 [email-masked]
eth0: Setting Rx mode to 1 addresses.
eth0: Setting Rx mode to 2 addresses.
eth0: Setting Rx mode to 3 addresses.
eth0: Setting Rx mode to 4 addresses.

which I has not occured with any other cards.

Sean...

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From: Sak Wathanasin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:47:39 +0000

In reply to Tony Grant's message of the 12/11/99 at 09:22 +0100,

> where additional cash does tend to go to buying kids shoes and stuff

The Netgear FA310 is a Tulip-based card and costs about UKP15 even from places
like Inmac; I'm sure you can do better if you ring around. I can confirm that
the tulip driver works just fine with it (both the one supplied with the 310
and the latest from D. Becker's web site).

Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited
178 Wainbody Ave South, Coventry CV3 6BX, UK

Internet: [email-masked]
Phone: (+44) 2476 419996        Mobile: (+44) 7970 751912            Fax: (+44)
2476 690690

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From: "P T Withington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 12:35:10 -0500

Caution:  NetGear has not used the Tulip card for quite some time.  It is now based on the Lite-On PNIC, which is similar to, but not 100% compatible with Tulip.

If you are looking for just one or two very good cards, cheap:

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Todd C. Miller
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: Recommended network (ethernet) cards? 

In message <[email-masked]>
	so spake Truman Boyes (truman):

> I recommend the Intel Etherexpress PRO 10/100+. Its a damn fine card. I
> use it in most of my OpenBSD machines. 

And you can get 'em cheap through Intel's promo program.
http://www.intel.com/network/offers/testdrive_adapter.htm

 - todd

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From: Lars <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 01:01:12 +0100

Admins,
I found the "problem". Reinstalling the packages 'nssv1' (was not 
installed) and 'libc' from series 'a' & 'd' did the "trick" (remember this 
was SuSE6.2).

'libc'		- the C libraries (duh)
'nssv1'	- run glibc-2.0 programs on a glibc-2.1 system

I installed the 3com905BTX in the server and it seems to have picked up 
some speed on the G4 450 though seldom hardware crashes are giving me hard 
time with the server (all log files look good - so my hardware has to be 
the culprit).

Will keep you all informed. Maybe we can make this place more informative 
rather than a "blackboard of problems".

regards,
Lars

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