On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Cheng Jin wrote:
> What does a large number of RX/TX errors from ifconfig output generally
> mean? Does it also include drop/overruns/frame errors?
The 'ifconfig' program doesn't have a defined behavior. It reads
/proc/net/dev and sums some of the available error counts. You should
read /proc/net/dev directly to find out what is going wrong.
The 'ifconfig' and 'netstat' programs follow the interface of their BSD
predecessors. BSD wasn't sophisticated about errors: it kept only very
basic statistics. Thus the tools only presented those numbers.
[[ That's not to say I think 'ifconfig' should be changed: there is no
compelling reason to break compatibility. It's been 20 years since
anyone thought that trailers were a good idea, but it doesn't hurt to
ignore the flag. ]]
> Is it an indication of bad packet on the link layer, which probably means
> faulty hardware? I am assuming any kind of buffer overflow statistics are
> kept under drop or overruns?
Check for kernel messages as well.
--
Donald Becker becker@xxxxxxxxx
Scyld Computing Corporation http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210 Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403 410-990-9993
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