Ethernet card keeps failing...

[dutchman3000]

Hello,

I'm having some trouble understanding what is happening with my ethernet card(Realtek). I'm running Mandrake 9.0.
Here's the problem:

Everything, ie, my internet connection is working fine. I do an ifconfig and see my ethernet card working as normal. However, a few days back I did a scan with nmap and the connection stopped working all of a sudden. I tried everything from re-connecting to re-configuring and re-installing the ethernet card/driver. What really blew my mind was that when I ran Ethereal, I could still see activity as normal passing to the ethernet card. I finally called my ISP who told me to put the card in a different slot on my motherboard. I did this, and my connection was back up again. Then yesterday I did a scan with nmap. After the scan was completed, the connection went down again. Again, I wasn't able to get back online. I put the ethernet card back into the original slot, but wasn't able to get back online. So I put the card in a new slot, after which Im back online again.

Does anyone know what is happening and why I have to physically put the ethernet card into another slot in order to get the connection working again?

Thanks,
dutchman

[bandwidth_pig]

I had a very similar experience once...only mine would just flat out just suddenly stop working. In particular, this was during Samba sessions. I'd swap out the NIC and have the same problem. And it was indeed the PCI slot I was using. I had to move to three different slots before the problem went away. Even more interesting was, the machine was dual boot and MS didn't show any conflicts at all. It took quite a bit of experimentation to get around. Perhaps your problem is similar.

[JohnT]

What modules are pre-loaded....use the command "lsmod" and post the results.

[dutchman3000]

Hey pig,
my problem actually looks remarkably similair to yours. I have dual boot with win2000. I don't get any conflicts in win either, everything seams to be working fine(except that I can't connect to the internet...).(?) You never had anymore problems after moving to the third slot? I'm afraid of something happening again and that I'll eventually run out of slots to put the card in... oh well, c'est la vie...
___________________________
Here's my lsmod John:
___________________________
Module Size Used by Not tainted
msdos 5364 0 (autoclean)
isofs 25652 0 (autoclean)
inflate_fs 17892 0 (autoclean) [isofs]
udf 85472 0 (autoclean)
sr_mod 15096 0 (autoclean)
floppy 49340 0 (autoclean)
parport_pc 21672 1 (autoclean)
lp 6720 0 (autoclean)
parport 23936 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
snd-seq-midi 3680 0 (autoclean) (unused)
snd-emu10k1-synth 4220 0 (autoclean) (unused)
snd-emux-synth 25532 0 (autoclean) [snd-emu10k1-synth]
snd-seq-midi-emul 4880 0 (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth]
snd-seq-virmidi 2888 0 (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth]
snd-seq-oss 26176 0 (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event 3208 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq 33264 2 [snd-seq-midi snd-emux-synth snd-seq-midi-emul snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-pcm-oss 36932 0
snd-mixer-oss 9016 1 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-emu10k1 56592 1 [snd-emu10k1-synth]
snd-pcm 55808 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 9964 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm]
snd-util-mem 1280 0 [snd-emux-synth snd-emu10k1]
snd-rawmidi 12864 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 3836 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-emu10k1-synth snd-emux-synth snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 25508 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-hwdep 3840 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 24804 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-emux-synth snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-util-mem snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec snd-hwdep]
soundcore 3780 0 [snd]
nfsd 66576 0 (autoclean)
lockd 46480 0 (autoclean) [nfsd]
sunrpc 60188 0 (autoclean) [nfsd lockd]
af_packet 13000 2 (autoclean)
8139too 14472 1 (autoclean)
mii 1152 0 (autoclean) [8139too]
keybdev 1920 0 (unused)
mousedev 4116 0 (unused)
hid 18340 0 (unused)
usbkbd 3412 0 (unused)
input 3456 0 [keybdev mousedev hid usbkbd]
nls_iso8859-1 2844 15 (autoclean)
nls_cp850 3580 3 (autoclean)
vfat 9588 3 (autoclean)
fat 31864 0 (autoclean) [msdos vfat]
supermount 14340 3 (autoclean)
ide-cd 28712 1
cdrom 26848 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
ide-scsi 8212 0
scsi_mod 90372 2 [sr_mod ide-scsi]
usb-uhci 21676 0 (unused)
usbcore 58304 1 [hid usbkbd usb-uhci]
rtc 6560 0 (autoclean)
______________________________________
If checked here before when I was experiencing difficulties with the Ethernet card. I'm not sure, probably has nothing to do with it, but are there supposed to be 2 entries for the card(8139too)?

[JohnT]

This is what I have loaded for the Realtek. On the way to work now so dont have time for a long explanation, its a matter of address, but from your description sounds as if you need this module...do a search here and on google.com/linux.


8139too 15240 1
mii 2304 0 [8139too]
crc32 2880 0 [8139too]

[bandwidth_pig]

You know, I think it was the third slot I wound up in. I wound up convinced there must have been some sort of conflict and Windows just didn't report it. It didn't matter if I was in Windows, or I was in Linux. The thing just stopped working suddenly. If I rebooted, it would work for a little while and then stop again. Soon the intervals got shorter and shorter. The third slot may or may not be the "magic" slot for you. What I wound up doing is popping off my case, leaving it off and began the process of experimentation. I'd pop it in a different slot, power her up and work on it for a while with the case off. It sometimes was up to a half hour or 45 minutes between episodes....sometimes it was only 10 or 15 minutes. But I kept taking it out and moving it to another slot until the problem went away. I think my soundcard didn't like the NIC in any slot but three. Thats my theory. So if your NIC is crapping out on you in Win 2k too, it isn't going to be a module issue. If it works ok in Win 2k then it might very well be. Mine just didn't work for long in either Windows or Linux. It did function. It would just suddenly stop.

[JohnT]

dutchman3000 what kind of cpu are you running in your box? AMD by any chance?