weird "sleepmode" with via vt6102 and wheezy

[Eike Lantzsch <zp6cge@gmx.net>]

Hi:

I got an older motherboard with embedded VIA VT6102 network controller which 
I'm using as a print server with cups.
It worked well with squeeze and also OK when I first moved to wheezy. 
Something however happened with later updates. Unfortunately I didn't realize 
actually with which upgrade this actually happened because I attributed it to 
a hardware failurev at first.
Oh, yes, what's the problem?

Well, the network controller of the box goes to sleep during longer 
inactivity. The pertinent LED on the switch goes off.
That happened with kernel 2.6.39 and now still keeps happening with 3.0.0.
In the morning just one keystroke is enough to bring the network controller 
back to work. The box does not hang. It's just the network connection.
It does not happen every night. I tried ping -t 60 from that box to another 
machine, thinking that this might keep up the network connection, but it 
didn't turn out that way. The activity obviously HAS to be on the keyboard - 
not the network.
This is awkward because I'm not always personally close to that box.

I perused through the BIOS but couldn't locate any setup which lets me 
configure this unwelcome sleepmode.
I couldn't figure out if there was some sleepmode introduced into the via-
rhine driver at some moment.

This problem seems to be rare because Google didn't come up with anything 
closely resembling this problem.

Any ideas?

Cheers
Eike

-- 
Eike Lantzsch ZP6CGE
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