Method and apparatus for managing flow control in a data processing system

1. A method in a network adapter for handling transfer of data, the method comprising:

detecting an overflow condition during a receipt of data from a sender;

enabling a flow control, in response to detecting the overflow condition, by transmitting a pause frame from the network adapter to the sender of the data;

making a plurality of determinations about whether the overflow condition is still present;

transmitting a new pause frame after each determination that the overflow condition is still present, wherein a plurality of pause frames are transmitted to the sender while the overflow condition exists;

determining whether an operating system is unavailable; and

responsive to the operating system being unavailable, disabling the flow control by ceasing the transmission of a new pause frame even though a determination was made that the overflow condition is still present.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the network adapter is an Ethernet network adapter.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

sending an interrupt to the operating system to determine whether the operating system is unavailable; and

determining that the operating system is unavailable if a response to the interrupt is absent after a particular period of time.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

starting a monitor timer responsive to detecting the overflow condition;

in response to a determination that the overflow condition is still present, determining whether the monitor timer has expired;

in response to determining that the overflow condition is still present and determining that the monitor timer has not expired, transmitting a new pause frame;

in response to determining that the overflow condition is still present and determining that the monitor timer has expired, sending an interrupt to the operating system; and

in response to not receiving a response to the interrupt, determining that the operating system is unavailable.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein each pause frame includes an idle time during which the sender should not send additional data to the network adapter.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

reenabling the flow control when the operating system becomes available.

7. A method in a network adapter for managing transmission of pause frames, the method comprising:

determining, by the network adapter, that data in a buffer in the network adapter exceeds a threshold level;

starting a monitor timer in response to the determination that the data exceeds the threshold level;

transmitting, by the network adapter to a sender of the data, a plurality of pause frames, which include a pause timer value, which requests the sender to halt sending additional data for the length of the pause timer value;

after each transmission of one of the plurality of pause frames, determining whether the monitor timer has expired and whether the data in the buffer still exceeds the threshold;

disabling, by the network adapter, transmissions of the plurality of pause frames responsive to the threshold level still being exceeded and the monitor timer having expired;

generating, by the network adapter, an interrupt to an operating system that is being executed by a computer system that includes the network adapter;

determining, by the network adapter, whether the network adapter has received a response to the interrupt from the operating system; and

restarting the monitor timer and re-enabling transmissions of the plurality of pause frames only after receiving a response from the operating system to the interrupt.