Help! Instable network on 6.06 based SuperMicro server with e1000 Intel driver

Floris Vlasveld floris at eyos.nl
Sun Feb 24 13:23:13 UTC 2008


Hello everybody,

I'm having a strange problem with a new SuperMicro 5015MT+ server. I  
recently installed Ubuntu 6.06 on this server (not the LAMP version,  
but I manually added Mysql, Proftpd, Bind, Postfix, Apache, PHP,  
Courier-POP3/Courier-IMAP and ISPConfig). When working from the office  
network, the server responded very fast to network traffic such as  
HTTP or SSH. However, I yesterday installed the server in a data  
center, and since then, connecting to the machine is -very- unstable.  
Sometimes I'm able to connect to it, sometimes I'm not (it just  
doesn't respond then).

On this server there are two network interfaces. One of them is  
connected to the internal VLAN, and the other is pretty directly  
connected to the outside world. Whenever I'm unable to connect to the  
server using the outside IP, I login to another machine on the  
internal VLAN and try to connect to the internal IP. That works, most  
of the time.

Whenever I "/etc/init.d/networking restart", the connection becomes  
available quite stable for a few minutes, but then after a while it  
gets unstable again. Nothing seems to be wrong with the actual NIC  
though, because I'm able to download skype.exe (as a test file) with  
over 10 mbit/s.

Here is my interfaces file:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address 80.xx.xx.70
  netmask 255.255.255.128
  gateway 80.xx.xx.1
  broadcast 80.xx.xx.255

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
  address 10.0.0.70
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 10.0.0.1
  broadcast 10.0.0.255

This is the current output of ifconfig -a:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:48:96:B1:20
           inet addr:80.xx.xx.70  Bcast:80.xx.xx.255  Mask: 
255.255.255.128
           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:20204 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:4675 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
           RX bytes:24130214 (23.0 MiB)  TX bytes:533361 (520.8 KiB)
           Base address:0x5000 Memory:e8a00000-e8a20000

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:48:96:B1:21
           inet addr:10.0.0.70  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:783 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:927 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
           RX bytes:70289 (68.6 KiB)  TX bytes:308918 (301.6 KiB)
           Base address:0x6000 Memory:e8b00000-e8b20000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
           inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
           UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
           RX packets:81 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:81 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
           RX bytes:7335 (7.1 KiB)  TX bytes:7335 (7.1 KiB)

Here is the output of "lshw -C network":

*-network
        description: Ethernet interface
        product: 82573E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
        vendor: Intel Corporation
        physical id: 0
        bus info: pci at 0d:00.0
        logical name: eth0
        version: 03
        serial: 00:30:48:96:b1:20
        size: 100MB/s
        capacity: 1GB/s
        width: 32 bits
        clock: 33MHz
        capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt  
10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegociation
        configuration: autonegociation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000  
driverversion=7.0.33-k2 duplex=full firmware=0.15-4 ip=80.69.93.70  
link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s
        resources: iomemory:e8a00000-e8a1ffff ioport:5000-501f irq:66
   *-network
        description: Ethernet interface
        product: 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
        vendor: Intel Corporation
        physical id: 0
        bus info: pci at 0e:00.0
        logical name: eth1
        version: 00
        serial: 00:30:48:96:b1:21
        size: 100MB/s
        capacity: 1GB/s
        width: 32 bits
        clock: 33MHz
        capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt  
10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegociation
        configuration: autonegociation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000  
driverversion=7.0.33-k2 duplex=full firmware=0.5-7 ip=10.0.0.70  
link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100MB/s
        resources: iomemory:e8b00000-e8b1ffff ioport:6000-601f irq:74

And, the output of "ethtool eth0" and eth1:

Settings for eth0:
	Supported ports: [ TP ]
	Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
	                        1000baseT/Full
	Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
	Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
	                        1000baseT/Full
	Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
	Speed: 100Mb/s
	Duplex: Full
	Port: Twisted Pair
	PHYAD: 0
	Transceiver: internal
	Auto-negotiation: on
	Supports Wake-on: umbg
	Wake-on: g
	Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
	Link detected: yes

Settings for eth1:
	Supported ports: [ TP ]
	Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
	                        1000baseT/Full
	Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
	Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
	                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
	                        1000baseT/Full
	Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
	Speed: 100Mb/s
	Duplex: Full
	Port: Twisted Pair
	PHYAD: 0
	Transceiver: internal
	Auto-negotiation: on
	Supports Wake-on: umbg
	Wake-on: g
	Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
	Link detected: yes

I disabled IPv6, just to see if that makes any differences.  
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to change the behavior. Also, I gave  
the server another IP just to see if that would make the problem  
disappear.. As you probably guessed, it didn't. In the hosting rack, I  
have a number of other SuperMicro servers running a home brewn LFS  
Linux that work just fine (for years already). Also, I have an  
identical SuperMicro machine (in another data center) with Ubuntu 6.06  
running VMware that doesn't have any problems. Also, I updated the  
e1000 kernel module to the newest version provided by intel.

What could the problem be? Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20080224/882026eb/attachment.html>


More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list