Network connection drops in Squeeze

["David A. Parker" <dparker@utica.edu>]

Hello,

I have an HP 6005 workstation with a fresh install of Debian Squeeze, 
and I am seeing some very strange networking behavior.  The network 
connection seems to drop periodically, but it comes back if you hit a 
key on the keyboard plugged into the machine.

Here's the general way it happens:

1.  I am logged into the machine via SSH
2.  I attempt to transfer a large file to or from the machine via SFTP
3.  At some point during the transfer, my SSH session will just hang and 
all connectivity to the machine is lost (I can't ping it, start a new 
SSH session, etc.)
4.  If I walk over to the physical machine and hit any key on the 
keyboard, all network connectivity immediately resumes.

I can reproduce this with pretty good consistency.  It seems to happen 
any time I am doing something fairly network intensive (large file 
transfer, X11 forwarding, etc.)  This is a clean command-line-only 
install of Squeeze (64-bit) with the default kernel (2.6.32-5-amd64).

The information for the onboard NIC is as follows:

3f:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761 
Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 3047
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 26
        Memory at f0200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at f0210000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [40] Vital Product Data
        Capabilities: [60] Vendor Specific Information: Len=6c <?>
        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [cc] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 64-31-50-ff-fe-3d-ba-f4
        Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
        Kernel driver in use: tg3

The NIC is using the tg3 driver.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?  Does anyone have any ideas?

    Thanks!
    Dave

--

Dave Parker
Systems Administrator
Utica College
Integrated Information Technology Services
(315) 792-3229
Registered Linux User #408177