One NIC goes up the other down... Help?

[porkbird]

Hi all,

I am having a strange problem with a server I am working on. It is an old server running redhat 3 update 3, linux 2.4.21-20.EL kernel. Anyway, I did not originally put the machine together, and am basically helping someone out. It had 3 network interfaces when I got there. One onboard NIC, and two additional NIC cards. For the longest time only 2 were up. Well, the server needed to have another IP so I just brought up the 3rd interface and thats where things got weird. When I bring up eth2, eth0 goes down. It does not log that it went down, but it becomes unresponsive. I had to do an ifup on eth0 and then everything works fine. However it does not log that eth0 came back up. I could not find anything unusual in any log, nor could I find anything wrong with the operation of the network after that point. So i kinda let it go.

Now, just to clear it up, this is my setup. eth0 onboot = yes and is my external line, eth1 and eth2 are both onboot = yes and are my two internal connections. When the server restarted recently, power failure, i could see in the log that all 3 started up and in sequence. However eth0 was still not accessible, so I just did an ifup and it works fine. It seems like there is a conflict between eth0 and eth2 but I have no idea how.

I even got a new NIC and replaced eth2, installed new drivers, and as soon as I bring eth2 up eth0 becomes unresponsive. But no errors were logged anywhere that I could find.

So if anyone has any idea I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

[hackson]

Hi,

Could you see what was the entries at /etc/modprobe.conf as the module was not aliased to the concerned and let me know what the neat is showing the status of application

[porkbird]

Hi,

Could you see what was the entries at /etc/modprobe.conf as the module was not aliased to the concerned and let me know what the neat is showing the status of application

I do not have an /etc/modprobe.conf file. It is located under
/etc/log.d/conf/services/modprobe.conf


But this is all it has....

# Yes = True = On = 1
# No = False = Off = 0

Title = "ModProbe"

# Which logfile group...
LogFile = messages

# Only give lines pertaining to the modprobe service...
*OnlyService = modprobe
*RemoveHeaders


Minus the comments.

[pitbull7270]

RHEL 3 should be /etc/modules.conf. What does ifconfig -a return? Also what is in your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* files?

[porkbird]

RHEL 3 should be /etc/modules.conf. What does ifconfig -a return? Also what is in your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* files?

Ok, I was looking for the wrong file...
Here is what it says in my modules.conf...

alias eth0 natsemi
alias eth1 tg3
alias eth2 r8169
alias scsi_hostadapter aic79xx
alias scsi_hostadapter1 ips
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
alias char-major-10-224 off

Now I feel like an ass. But here is the ifcfg file anyway. Also I should have mentioned that this is WS not Enterprise.

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=***.***.***.***
NETMASK=255.255.255.252


ifcofig returns the following.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:B5:08:F6:90
inet addr:***.***.***.*** Bcast:***.***.***.*** Mask:255.255.255.252
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2212248 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2466171 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:636191039 (606.7 Mb) TX bytes:1271723073 (1212.8 Mb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x9000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:601:89:F9
inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:3660064 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4103001 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1595834442 (1521.9 Mb) TX bytes:2065315533 (1969.6 Mb)
Interrupt:5

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0E:0C:C6:64:12
inet addr:192.168.254.15 Bcast:192.168.254.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:116835 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:127702 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:9497954 (9.0 Mb) TX bytes:86636400 (82.6 Mb)

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:20200 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:20200 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2093540 (1.9 Mb) TX bytes:2093540 (1.9 Mb)

[porkbird]

Bump? Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.