Linux nukes my network hardware?
Hello,
a couple of days ago, when booting into Debian, I could not get a
DHCP-offer, so the network was not brought up.
I assigned an address that was not in use via ifconfig, and tried a
couple of pings.
Pinging a system in the same subnet succeeded, but pinging the gateway
failed.
IP: 10.40.0.61
ping 10.40.0.85: OK
ping 10.40.3.254: failed
If one of the other systems in the subnet pings the broken system,
there is 95% packet loss.
I swapped cables, tried other sockets in the wall, that I knew where
OK, but nothing changed.
I booted Win XP, but that was worse, trying to access the network
regularly resulted in reboots.
So I concluded there was a hardware problem, and had the motherboard of
the Dell Optiplex GX270 (with built in Intel 82540EM) replaced. Booted
Windows and everything was fine. Yesterday I booted Windows again, all
was still fine so I decided to start Debian again and was immediately
back to the beginning of this message: network down.
I put in a pci-network-card, but the results are the same, whether I
disable the built in NIC or not.
So, something on the motherboard is broken again, or something on the
net doesn't like me to use Linux on that system (the one I'm sending
this from is a Debian system on the same network but with a very up to
date kernel that I configured myself, the broken system uses Debian's
kernel-image-2.6.11-1-686), and locks me out permanently.
Any advice on how to diagnose this? I'm afraid a lot of imagination or
know-how will be needed.
I have to receive feedback on the original MB, so that I know if there
is any physical damage.
Thanks,
Gerard
PS. The broken system had been running Linux for almost half a year, the
switch to 2.6.11-1 happened a couple of months ago, aptitude was run
almost daily but I find no recent updates related to the network. When
I put a cable directly from that PC to another, there are no problems
between these two. Installing a self made 2.6.14 kernel package did not
heal the system.
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