I have a firewall that is running RedHat 7.1, 2.4.9 kernel, iptables, and two 3com 3c90x network cards. We have a 4 workstation LAN that uses this firewall as the main gateway (and a Cisco router as the actual gateway). The firewall works like a charm, but every 24 hours (approx.) I get an error message (shown below) that renders the firewall useless until I do a reboot (ctl+alt+delete).

My attempts at a solution:

1. Booted with the "noapic" option. Didn't work.

2. Turned off many of the devices (in the BIOS) that I am not using to free up IRQs and remove conflicts. Didn't work.

3. I am using the 3c59x driver and I thought I should find the 3c90x driver, but I could not find a recent driver on 3com's site and I found this post: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...46c0a541d11,2.

4. Increased the number of "buckets" in ip_conntrack. Didn't work.

5. Turned of tcp_syncookies. Didn't work.

6. Upgraded from 2.4.2 kernel to 2.4.7 kernel. Didn't work.

7. Upgrade from 2.4.7 kernel to 2.4.9 kernel. Didn't work.


Error Message (from log):

Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed
out
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: eth1: transmit timed out, tx_status 00
status e000.
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: diagnostics: net 0cda media 8880 dma
000000a0.
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: Flags; bus-master 1, dirty 61401(9)
current 61417(9)
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: Transmit list 07343440 vs. c7343440.
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 0: @c7343200 length 8000002a status
0000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 1: @c7343240 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 2: @c7343280 length 8000002a status
0000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 3: @c73432c0 length 8000002a status
0000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 4: @c7343300 length 8000002a status
0000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 5: @c7343340 length 8000002a status
0000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 6: @c7343380 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 7: @c73433c0 length 8000002a status
8000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 8: @c7343400 length 8000002a status
8000002a
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 9: @c7343440 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 10: @c7343480 length 80000227 status
00000227
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 11: @c73434c0 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 12: @c7343500 length 80000227 status
00000227
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 13: @c7343540 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 14: @c7343580 length 8000003e status
0000003e
Jul 24 13:42:38 castor kernel: 15: @c73435c0 length 8000002a status
0000002a

This messages repeats over and over again until I reboot the firewall. Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?

Thanks,
Aaron