[vortex-bug] [DESPERATE] Need some insight on Tornado's connected to a foundry switch

[Ian C.Sison]

Hello anyone who can help!

I've got several servers connected to a foundry serveriron L4 switch.  They are
dual P3s, with 3 adaptec SCSI controllers and 2 3com Tornadoes.  I only use one
tornado, however.  The other nic is installed but it's interface is private and
not being used.  OS is Redhat 6.2, running the stock linus (not redhat) kernel
2.2.16 with the combo errata patch.  The servers are a farm basically used for
squid proxy/cache service, and have fairly heavy ethernet traffic.

Problem:  Every once in a while, the ethernet interface fails.  The server
itself is ok (no kernel or driver errors in the logfiles), the only difference
is that it cannot see the network anymore, both ways.  Ping fails, and believe
it or not, i cannot even ping the IP address assigned to the ethernet cards
_from the local machine itself_ ! ! !

The only solution to this would either be to (1) reboot, or (2) restart the
network (via /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart) or (3) manually do an ifconfig
eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up procedure.  Obviously the downtime of this is
unacceptable.

Question is why is this happening?  I am tempted to put the blame on the
foundry switch, but i have nothing to back-up my claims.

Anyone here knows what is going on?

Ian