I've been seeing the error:

Aug 18 21:24:59 titan kernel: eth-gig1: too many iterations (6) in
nv_nic_irq.
Aug 18 21:24:59 titan kernel: eth-gig1: too many iterations (6) in
nv_nic_irq.
Aug 18 21:24:59 titan kernel: eth-gig1: too many iterations (6) in
nv_nic_irq.

in the logs when there is heavy network traffic on my Sarge/amd64
system. The error is produced by the kernel module forcedeth for the
on-board gigabit ethernet controller.

Suggestions I've found through googling indicate using the
'max_interrupt_work' module parameter and setting it to 10, rather than
the default 5.

My question is: what/where is The Right Place to put this module
parameter setting? I went to /etc/modules.conf first: but a note in
that file indicates it should not be edited directly:

# Please do not edit this file directly. If you want to change or add
# anything please take a look at the files in /etc/modutils and read
# the manpage for update-modules

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:08:29AM +0100, Dave Ewart wrote:

[..]

The replacement directory is /etc/modprobe.d and I don't think any
update-* is required.

No, your changes will be lost.

Make a file of any name in /etc/modprobe.d and put

options forcedeth ...

eg I have /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-options which says

On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:08:29AM +0100, Dave Ewart wrote:

On Monday, 21.08.2006 at 10:08 +0100, Dave Ewart wrote:

Interesting, having introduced /etc/modprobe.d/forcedeth containing:

options forcedeth max_interrupt_work=15

when the system is under subsequent heavy load I see:

Aug 22 21:32:18 titan kernel: eth-gig1: too many iterations (16) in
nv_nic_irq.

So it seems that value is not high enough. Or there's some other
problem.

It's possible this isn't an amd64-specific issue so I'll perhaps re-post
elsewhere, however if anyone has any further comments, that'd be
helpful!

Cheers,