network stalls on Fedora Core 3

[Andy Green]

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Keith Fetterman wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback.
|
| I think this problem is different.  The remote server is inside our
| intranet, but it is at a remote location, which we are connected to via
| a T1.
|
| I have two other computers on the same subnet that are running Red Hat
| Linux 3 and they do not experience this problem at all.  One of these
| computers is identical to the one that is experiencing the network
| stall, i.e., same motherboard, processor and network card.  The network
| card is a "3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]".
|
| This is weird.  Since I have tried a different card, different cable and
| different port on the switch, I am wondering if it has to do with the
| network driver in FC3.
|
| I am wondering if this problem could be caused by other hardware in the
| system?  I have checked dmesg and /var/log/messages, but I can't find
| any errors.
|
| Thanks for the feedback.

Couple of ideas focused on the idea it's a connectivity problem - check
ifconfig and see if any of the error counters for eth0 are nonzero.

Also, time a "stall"... if you are experiencing packetloss for whatever
reason the TCP reties get slower and slower each time, it would be
interesting if the "stall" time is a number matching one of the timeouts.

Also, try to floodping an idle server on your network, and see how many
packets get dropped, eg

ping -f -i 0 -s 1490 192.168.0.1

where 192.168.0.1 is the partner server.  Make sure the target server is
robust and otherwise idle.  Leave it running for a while, every dropped
packet gets a . printed.  If you see no output, your connection can't be
that bad.

Another way, use the network cable from a box NOT exhibiting the
symptoms temporarily plugged in your bad machine and see if the symptoms
thereby go away.

- -Andy
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