Network sporadically goes down - sort of...

[kiwi-in-dc]

OK, so I have an odd problem.

I'm running fc8 with an embedded Marvell gigabit ethernet card. Sporadically my ability to connect to the machine disappears - whether http, ssh, vnc or anything else. Trying to re-connect gives me a connection refused. This seemed pretty straightforward problem...

Except for the fact that the two virtual Windows machines I have running under VMWare keep their connectivity to the world. So, I cannot connect to the Linux apache httpd, but I can still connect to the virtual IIS web server on a different IP address.

That implies that the ethernet card driver is still working since VMWare can still work with it, but somewhere further up the IP stack there is a problem that is preventing Linux from working.

Any thoughts anyone? Is a new NIC likely to make a difference?

Thanks for your help!
Alastair

[Nokia]

Any error messages from /var/log/messages and a dmesg would be helpful

[kiwi-in-dc]

Nothing in /var/log/messages that appears to be non-normal and here's the dmesg dump.

The only thing I can see is the occasional message about eth0 entering and leaving promiscuous mode.

[Nokia]

Hmm, seems vmware related. Do you have the latest version ?

[kiwi-in-dc]

Yes, downloaded the latest version in trying to figure out what the problem is. Rebuilt the VMware network code against the kernel to make sure too.