Re: [afnog]system Hanging

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 02:28:07PM +0100, Brian Candler wrote:
> Layer 1 problems:
>   - bad cable         (try a new cable)
>   - bad switch port   (try plugging into a different port, or a new switch)
>   - bad NIC           (try a new NIC)

... and try a different NIC from a different vendor. In particular, you
should avoid "NE2000"-clone NICs. A good choice is what FreeBSD calls "fxp"
(boards based on the i82557, i82558, i82559, i82550, i82562 chipset, such as
the Intel EtherExpress Pro fast ethernet cards). Many motherboards' on-board
NICs use this chipset anyway.

>   - interrupt conflicts  (shouldn't be a problem with PCI NICs, but with
>                           ISA NICs try configuring to a different IRQ)

And I just remembered:
    - bus timing

If your BIOS lets you slow down the I/O bus, try doing so. This was
particularly a problem with ISA cards.

Also, try removing all other cards which are not needed in the system. If
this is a server then it doesn't need a sound card, for instance.

And of course, make sure your O/S is fully up-to-date with the latest
patches, in case you're receiving attacks from the Internet (although I
think the most recent RPC attacks against Windows caused machines to reboot,
rather than just stop talking to the network; and if your server is a
Windows machine then use an up-to-date antivirus program)

Regards,

Brian.
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