On my slackware machine, if I don't use it for a while, say several hours, and I go back to it, eth0 loses its IP address and I can't get it back with 'ifconfig eth0 up'. (Maybe there's some other command I should be using.) The IP address comes from my linksys router serving up dhcp.

I found this clue in /var/log/messages:
Mar 25 19:09:51 bslack9 kernel: eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 45e1.

and in dmesg:
eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 45e1.

I have no clue yet what this means or why it happens, but it appears to be the last thing to happen before the IP address evaporates.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Edit:

And in /var/log/messages I have about 150 of these:
.
.
.
Mar 25 17:22:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 17:42:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 18:02:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 18:22:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 18:42:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 19:02:43 bslack9 -- MARK --
Mar 25 19:09:51 bslack9 kernel: eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 45e1.

Are you using DHCP to grab an IP address? or is it set manually (static IP)?

From my post above:

I'm sorry, I didn't see that the first time or second time through your post. Ok so from there you're saying that the link just drops.... but is it s physical drop, as in is the network card shutting off? Or is it just dropping the IP information? If it's the first, either a bad cable, card or port on the router. If the second then theres possibly a problem with the cards module.

What i'd like to see is some ethereal packet captures of you getting the IP address to see if the card is getting it properly and actually keeping it and not releasing it, OR if the card is for some reason just forgetting to renew it's Ip in which case it will time out within the routers lease file.

Hey, I didn't mean to be curt in my reply. I was busy with something else when I posted. Yeah, I'll boot up and get on the internet, say, then go do something else for a few hours or overnight, and when I try to continue a mozilla session, for example, there is no longer a link to the network. And ifconfig shows that no IP is assigned anymore.

I'll have to see if the IP address evaporates over night again. Then I'll check the lights on the back of the card. It's a netgear and there are 5 lights, 100, Full, Link, Act, Col. Currently the first 3 are lit. If the IP goes away I'll see if that changes. I don't think there is a problem with the cable or router, it's all out of harms way, relatively new, and shouldn't have any deterioration.

Now there might be a problem with the card's module. I recently reinstalled Slackware 9.0 cleanly on the machine and then loaded swaret, changed the conf file to get -current and uncommented all of the Excludes. Then I ran swaret --update and --upgrade. I'm fully up to snuff on that machine!
This is probably wherein the problem lies.

I've seen ethereal mentioned, but I don't have experience with it to speak of. I'll have to look into that, unless you can throw me a quick howto.

Thanks

no no I wasn't trying to be an ass by saying I missed that twice, I really did lol I just wan't paying attention. I'd say you're on the right path, go check those things overnight and report back.

Basically for the ethereal howto real quick you need to download ethereal www.ethereal.com then become root, open it up...

but heres what I want to see... boot up the PC without the NIC connected so it can't get an IP yet... fire up ethereal go to capture then start... a box will pop up... you need to check Update list of packets in real time and automatic scrolling. from there there will be a Filter text box... in there type udp port 67 so it will capture only DHCP packets then hit ok to start the capture... from there you need to plug in the NIC and run dhcpcd -t 10 eth0 and watch the packets fly... all 4 of them or so... click stop once you have an IP address and then you can save the capture... If possible I'd like to be able to look at the capture if you wanna post it somewhere, I can give you an ftp to put it on.

Basically I wanna see if it's renewing properly or not. DHCP goes through a 4 step process known as "DORK" to me.. heh Discovery Offer Request and acKnowledgement... then you get your IP for a certain lease time.... at exactly half of that lease time your dhcpcd sends a request to renew the packet and the server will send another ACK back saying ok, then you have another given period for the IP... thats what I wanna see, to see if it's working properly.. that could tell you a lot about the network there and tell you where you need to look next.

Ok, thanks for the reply.
I'm downloading ethereal from linuxpackages.net.
I'll fire it up tomorrow and check it out.

And, as one apologizer to another , I didn't think you were being an ass. I thought I came off as curt (brief, to the point of rudeness.)

Ok, I ran ethereal. I had to initially login as root to do it, so I could get the display (:0.0). I followed your steps and captured the session.
Here's what I got. Don't see where it will help though.
(Also, I smudged some stuff that I thought probably shouldn't be displayed.)

Also, prior to doing this, the IP address did not evaporate over night this time, although it has done it sporadically at 3 other times.

Ok well the one thing I do see in there that I don't like is the NAK, Negative Acknowledgement, which might have something to do with something but I don't see enough traffic to put it on anything. Hows it been doing lately?

Well, it happened again. I left the slackware box on overnight. I just turned off the monitor. Today I turn on the monitor and typed a swaret --search command and got "Network Connection down!". Sure enough, checked ifconfig -a and eth0 lost its IP again.
So, I look at the back of the computer. The three lights are still on, 100, Full, and Link. And I noticed that the Act light was flashing periodically, at about 1 minute intervals, as if it was looking for an IP from DHCP maybe.


This time there is no indication of anything stoppng or going wrong in either /var/log/messages or in dmesg. However, all those "- - Mark - -" lines in /var/log/messages every 20 minutes are a little perplexing.

I am also having the same problem described here.

I have a Linksys Wireless WPC11 Ver3 card that works fine most of the time and then it just magically looses its Info. Like the Access point just bugged out. This is set statically in the Wireless.opts file.

So after I got tired of this I installed another Ethernet card, a Linksys USB100TX. It fires up fine the modules load and I set its IP statically through the ifconfig and it will work fine and then it will lose its IP.

I have to either restart the PCMCIA service to get the Wireless back or rerun the ifconfig command to get the USB one working. It gets annoying having the cards die when you are running a remote SSH session.

Any Help is appreciated.

Thanks

Long

I discovered that I can go into /etc/rc.d and run ./rc.inet1 to get my IP back from the DHCP server.

Now if I can just figure out why it evaporates overnight.

Is there some networking log thing that I can run overnight to look for clues?
Maybe ethereal will do that. I guess I can start it up, set it to capture everything, and then leave it alone for a day or so and then see if there is any indication.
<-- my normal state.

This might be really stupid, but could it be an APM related thing? The same behavior happens when I suspend my laptop. (I haven't felt like fixing the problem yet.)

By the way, converted a Mandrake box to Slackware a month ago, and the laptop, which I got used with no OS, only knows Slack. What a great, simple, clear distro!

Jim

ANother possible stupid answer. I was having connection drops and figured out that netconfig had set me up with the wrong module. I was loading the tulip module but for my card I should have been loading dmfe. Tulip worked okay for awhile but then would silently die.

My recent correspondence with Netgear (in a nutshell):

from me: Hi, I need the latest Linux driver for the FA310TX
netgear: (automated response) Here is how to set it up in Windows.
from me: I don't need any Windows info, I need the latest Linux driver.
netgear: The driver is in the SCO directory on the install disk.

Well, the Install disk has an SCO directory AND a Linux directory. The Linux directory has tulip.c in it and it's dated from 1998. The SCO directory has an ngr224.z file in it, also dated in 1998.

My slackware box doesn't have a tulip.c file or an ngr224.z file, but it does have 2 tulip.h files dated in 2002 and and in feb of this year and they are located deep down in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.25/.... path.

So, apparently netgear isn't quite fully onboard with the linux support yet.

Anyway... I think my only solution is to go back and reinstall slackware from my CD's and then don't do a swaret upgrade on everything, because something in that process is what has hosed up the IP address retention.