I'm using a CentOS52 server as a VMWare host and for some reason it stops responding to network traffic on a semi regular basis. I would first notice my ssh connections would disappear, then the VMWare console would also disconnect. I go and check out the console and I get an "eth0: entering promiscuous mode" message that repeats every minute or so. I would then try "service network restart" but that doesn't work; only a reboot does the trick. (I haven't checked my logs yet.)

I'm pretty sure it's not a result of a hack because I've reloaded CentOS/VMWS on this machine a number of times and I've also put in a new firewall w/rules not allowing traffic originating from outside.

Has anyone seen this problem before and how did you solve it? Thanks!

- Joe

Your in clock hell. Essentially what is happenning is the clock eventually stops advancing and circles in about a 5 second range, the kernel network stack can't handle this behavior and stops communicating. You need to try the various tricks for clock synch and see if they solve the issue for you. Xen and Virtualbox don't have this problem, well xen for sure doesn't and I haven't encountered it in virtualbox yet. I'd bet vmware higher end servers like esx/gsx don't have the issue either.