Network Dropping Issues

unix_is_fun · 05-11-2005, 05:55 PM

I have two slackware 10.1 machines set up connected by a switch; one is my development/X Desktop and the other is a practice server so I can learn networking. However, it seems that the network drops every now and then (sometimes as quickly 5-15 minutes). The problems seem to come about when trying to use ssh and ftp, or ssh and web, or even just ftp. I think this is an arp issue because I ran tcpdump on the server and kept seeing requests for the server's MAC address. When I run arp -a I see the host listed with a MAC address of <incomplete>.

Quite often the problem can be solved by bring the eth0 interface down and then up. I actually pull the following two commands:

ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 down
ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.5 up netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.2.255

Anyone know what is going on?

AltF4 · 05-11-2005, 06:18 PM

any messages in /var/log/messages ?
last lines in "dmesg" output ?

unix_is_fun · 05-19-2005, 05:03 PM

Sorry it took so long to answer this post, life has been crazy lately.

There were no related network system messages but dmesg had an interesting output.
Here's the relevant output from dmesg:

Code:

NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: 21140 transmit timed out, status fc740000, SIA ffffff7e 0000e400 0000e470 fffffec8, resetting...
eth0: transmit timed out, switching to 100baseTx-FDX media.
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: 21140 transmit timed out, status fc740000, SIA ffffff7e 0000e400 0000e470 fffffec8, resetting...
eth0: transmit timed out, switching to MII media.
eth0: Out-of-sync dirty pointer, 770 vs. 787.
eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 45e1.
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: 21140 transmit timed out, status fc740000, SIA ffffff7e 0000e400 0000e470 fffffec8, resetting...
eth0: transmit timed out, switching to 100baseTx-FDX media.
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: 21140 transmit timed out, status fc740000, SIA ffffff7e 0000e400 0000e470 fffffec8, resetting...
eth0: transmit timed out, switching to MII media.
eth0: Out-of-sync dirty pointer, 31 vs. 48.
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Out-of-sync dirty pointer, 47 vs. 64.
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
eth0: Out-of-sync dirty pointer, 63 vs. 80.

AltF4 · 05-19-2005, 09:08 PM

sounds like trouble

- check cabling
- use different port on switch
- if above are OK try different NIC