HP-PB Token Ring Release Notes

HP-PB Token Ring Release Notes for HP-UX 11i

Patches and Fixes for this Version

Patch PHNE_17355:

• The card can go into a hang state and an error message will be logged in the

‘/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log’ ﬁle.

A bug in the ﬁrmware can create a situation such that the ﬁrmware sends the inbound

frames with the size larger than the conﬁgured MTU. However, the driver does not provide

enough buffers for DMA. The DMA hardware then gives an error which causes the card

and driver to go to a fatal error (hung) state. The driver will now drop those packets that

arrive with the larger size, thus preventing the hung state. Indication of the dropped

packets is logged in the NetTL log ﬁle.

• CISCO HSRP addresses cannot be reached.

The HP-PB Token Ring driver treats all of the functional addresses as multicast

addresses. This causes a concern if any system uses functional addresses as the primary

source address. The driver now checks for IP multicast functional addresses and converts

only those to general multicast functional addresses. Other functional addresses are used

without any transformation.

• The system may panic when it is heavily loaded and memory is low.

The HP-PB Token Ring driver reuses a buffer chain even after it has been freed. Due to

this, the card initially will appear to hang (no outbound is performed) and when the user

tries to reset the hung interface card with the lanadmin command, the system will panic

due to a wrong memory access. More robust checks have been implemented and proper

cleanup is done whenever memory is freed.

• System panics with Data page fault in the HP-PB Token Ring driver.

The HP-PB Token Ring driver writes to a wrong memory address which may lead to a

system panic. The driver now validates the address range before using the memory

address.

• The HP-PB Token Ring driver shows the wrong value for “Operational Status”

MIB object.

The HP-PB Token Ring driver does not set the “Operational Status” MIB object to “UP”

after the successful initialization of the driver/interface card. This leaves the value of this

object always to “DOWN” even if the card is functional. The driver now marks the

“Operational Status” as “UP” when driver initialization is successfully completed.

• When the HP-PB Token Ring card is used with a Token Ring card supporting

4500 MTU size, the network may hang.

Since the maximum size for the HP-PB Token Ring card is 4170, it will ignore incoming

packets of a size greater than 4170. Some vendor cards support 4500 as the maximum

MTU, therefore, the maximum MTU size for the HP-PB Token Ring card must be