Network interface byte counters

[Scott Gifford <sgifford@suspectclass.com>]

Hello,

We're trying to set up MRTG on a Debian box, just upgraded from Woody
to Sarge.  It's showing zero usage on a very busy server.  Some
investigation reveals that the byte counters are maxed out:

    # ifconfig -a
    eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:B0:D0:F0:82:85
              inet addr:64.18.229.153  Bcast:64.18.229.159
              Mask:255.255.255.240
              UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
              RX packets:130848069 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
              TX packets:130666040 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
              collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
              RX bytes:4294967295 (3.9 GiB)  TX bytes:4294967295 (3.9 GiB)
              Interrupt:17

Those "RX bytes" and "TX bytes" numbers are the same ones that show up
in /proc/net/dev, 

    snmpget -v 1 ... 'ifOutOctets.2'
    snmpget -v 1 ... 'ifInOctets.2'

and MRTG's log files, and of course in /usr/include/limits.h as
ULONG_MAX.

We're running kernel 2.4.19.

Is there a way to reset those counters, or make them bigger?  The box
is very busy, and probably transfers 4GB of data in a day or so, so
rebooting every day isn't really a good option.  

Would upgrading the kernel help?

Thanks!

----ScottG.