[mythtv-users] 9.04 woes with Marvell 88E8056 NIC

[C.T. Paterson]

Hey folks,

Not so much an appeal for help as a warning for others.  Along with my
upgrade to 9.04, I took on a restructuring of my data such that my
myth ran off a USB thumbdrive in the back, with all media (including
recordings) being stored on a NAS in the basement.  All this to say I
am now heavily reliant on my network.

The missus has many complaints about post-upgrade performance, among
them being stuttering during "compressed media" playback (mpeg4 movies
and mp3 music), and an inability to change channels reliably
(behaviour indicated timeouts when switching to new files).

I was surprised, given that my math indicated gig-e should be plenty
for 3 mpeg2 streams plus some internet downloading (a seeming
worst-case scenario for my dual-tuner FE/BE), and investigation
revealed some pretty bad network flakiness.

I re-installed 9.04, and the flakiness continued before I even got
going with my media, so I switched back to 8.10.  Media performance is
now way better.

I'd really like to investigate further, but my time (as well as my
family's patience as I muck around and deprive them of TV) is limited.
 Can anyone confirm the same problem, or is there any other specific
data I can supply (preferably from running the liveCD)?  Otherwise, I
just caution any with the same hardware...

My mobo is an Asus P5K-VM; NIC data from an lshw follows...

           *-network
                description: Ethernet interface
                product: 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
                vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci at 0000:02:00.0
                logical name: eth0
                version: 12
                size: 1GB/s
                capacity: 1GB/s
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master
cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt
1000bt-fd autonegotiation
                configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes
driver=sky2 driverversion=1.22 duplex=full firmware=N/A ip=x.y.z.a
latency=0 link=yes module=sky2 multicast=yes port=twisted pair
speed=1GB/s

Cheers.

-- 
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
                                        -- Thomas Paine