[cobalt-users] Re: RaQ 3 stops responding to network

["David Thacker" <Cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Hello,
>   I have a RaQ 3 that stops responding to the network after it has
>  been on for a while.  When it stops responding the Tx/Rx light on the
>  front is blinking continuously.  I have to shutdown the RaQ from the LCD
>  console, rebooting doesn't work.  When I power the box back up it is fine
>  for a while, I can access the web GUI and via SSH until the light starts
>  blinking again.
>
>  ...
>
>  If someone has seen this before or has any ideas what's going on, I'd
>  appreciate it.
>


Hi Tim,

I've seen a similar behaviour on my RaQ3 in the past, where it would appear
to drop off the network intermittently.  Not quite the same as your report,
but I wasn't able to view my server (colocated 75 miles away) to know if the
Tx/Rx light was going crazy or not.

I posted some info about it back in February, reposted here:

--

The dirty little secret is that this behaviour just sometimes happens on the
RaQ3s.  If you scour the archives back a couple years, you'll find similar
posts about this problem, mine included.

Trying to resolve it with Cobalt support was unsuccessful.  I finally did
find a cure that fixed my RaQ3 though: simply making it ping out to the
gateway on a regular basis was enough to keep the machine visible on the
net.  Here's what I use:

nohup ping -i 65 -n gate.way.ip.address &

Su to root, then enter this command, which tells your RaQ to ping the
gateway once every 65 seconds running as a background process.

Actually powering down the server (not just rebooting) does seem to make it
happier too.

My colo guy came to the conclusion that it was some weird antisocial
behaviour between the onboard Intel ethernet port and certain Cisco 27xx
switches.  He figured it might be possible to solve the problem by rolling a
newer Intel ethernet driver into the RaQ3 kernel, but we never went that far
to see if that would do the trick.

Good luck,

dAvid tHacker
Thacker Network Technologies Inc.