Ethernet problems with UDB, was working, now isnt

Randall Shutt (rshutt@extacy.ravenet.com)
Sat, 1 Mar 1997 19:23:22 -0500


Sorry to bug again, but Im having serious problems with the dec ethernet
builtin to the udb. It was working, then I built a new 2.0.27 (so I could
enable quotafs) and tried to reboot it remotely. Next thing I know, our lan is
down, the T1 is dead and all kinda bad stuff. Apparently the udb hung at the
ifconfig part of the sysinit (redhat-4.1, ifcfg-eth0 had onboot=yes). It just
hung at eth0: Media type TP or somesuch. It was jabbering so much that it was
taking down the entire lan.

So after we figure this out, I go to the console of the machine and every
time I try to boot it, it sits there frozen and jabbers. So I did some
debugging, and had it ifconfig in the background (using &) and it would still
jabber (and be the only pingable host on that lan).

The final thing I did was to have it onboot=no, and then ifconfig it up
after the rest of the init (after daemons start and such) from rc.local. This
works just fine, no jabbering, it doesnt harm the network in any way. So what
Im wondering is if there may be a bug in the dec driver in 2.0.27. I dunno how
this could be, because it WAS working just fine, with kernels I compiled from
the same code base with the same compiler. Anyway, Im kinda desperate because
if the machine crashes, I now have to go start some daemons manually (since
they were unable to start due to the unreachable network).

Finally, the only other changes I made to the system was an upgrade from
glibc-961212-3 to glibc-961212-4 and installed named (which couldnt have this
effect since it doesnt even start before the init would normally try to start
the ethernet). Thanks in advance for any advice that can be given.

-- 
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                                            Randall Shutt              
                                            RaveNet Systems, Inc.
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