Server Loses Network for no apparent reason?

[Al Licause]

tg3 is broadcoms driver. It will eventually replace the bcm5700 driver.

It appears that you are using the tg3 driver.

Might want to confirm that with the contents of /etc/modprobe.conf and/or ethtool.

[L_Dieter]

Hi Robert,


Maybe a rather stupid question: checked on duplicate IPs? The only time I had this kind of problems, it was due to duplicate IPs.

Best regards,
Dieter

[Alexander Samad]

Are you using PSP and thus the HP driver for the nic. If so did you upgrade the driver when yuo upgraded the kernel ?

When you loose connectivity what does a tcpdump on the interface produce, do you see any traffic at all, what does ethtool give you link state etc.

[Stuart Browne]

I don't suppose you've tried the simple "replace the cable" bit?

Cables die *shrug*.

[Robert Walker_8]

Gday,

A couple of answers to your questions. We have just moved its ip address and the problem still persists. We have upgraded it from 100Mbs to a bonded pair of GB NICs (admittedly still using the same DL380 NICs provided on the mother board) with no result - ie the server didnt failover to its backup NIC - the whole network stack froze effectively.

We have run a TCPDUMP as the call was logged with Redhat and they too asked whether tcpdump showed anything. The only thing is the following:

10:16:22.275318 arp who-has 192.168.10.30 tell myserver.example.com
10:16:25.275570 arp who-has 192.168.10.31 tell myserver.example.com
10:16:26.276324 arp who-has 192.168.10.31 tell myserver.example.com
10:16:27.276075 arp who-has 192.168.10.31 tell myserver.example.com
10:16:30.276330 arp who-has 192.168.10.30 tell myserver.example.com
10:16:31.276085 arp who-has 192.168.10.30 tell myserver.example.com

10.31/10.30 are our DNS/Wins windows servers which are also defined in /etc/resolv.conf

Again a service network restart resolves the problem or an ifup/ifdown on the interface.

Robert.

[Robert Walker_8]

Gday,

Problem still occuring, has happened again today. We downgraded the kernel from 2.6.9-42.0.3 to 2.6.9-34.0.2 as this is the time frame when it started - always the case two things done and then a problem appears.

The problem seems to be mostly around the NFS file transfer time about 30 minutes to 1 hour into the transfer. As mentioned tcpdump just shows no network activity, as if the network were switched off! Teaming/bonding dont seem to help as the interface appears to be up but not communicating.

Any ideas?

Robert.

[Andrew Gilbrt]

Robert,

We are in the throes of a very similar situation. We have a number of servers it is occurring on, some it is not. We have tried a variety of fixes, including bonding/unbonding, drivers, kernel revs. Will try to get a more detailed post to you.

[Andrew Gilbrt · Accepted solution]

Robert,

Have you seen this thread?

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=898761

Looks quite promising

[Robert Walker_8]

Gday,

Going to close this thread as it appears we have a similar problem posted here:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=898761

Thanks for all who have contributed - I will look at updating my drivers (something which has been festering in my mind for a while - however thought it to be a Redhat issue). Well see how that goes.

Messy XMAS & New Year to you all!

Robert.