debian network stops working suddenly

[Croydon]

Hi,

I have a really strange server problem that I've never experienced before.

The setup is a debian lenny server with latest updates, ispconfig2 and ossec installed, a hardware raid (3ware) - nothing else installed that I would call "special".

After a (i believe) random amount of time the network of this server completely(!) stops working.
That means I cannot even ping localhost or 127.0.0.1
There is nothing special in any log. /var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages, apache log, postfix log, proftp log, /var/log/kern, /var/log/dmesg - everything normal despite the fact that suddenly everything network-related stops working.

I can still do anything via serial remote console, top shows no process running (all sleeping) - load is at zero. Memory consumption normal.
I have no further idea what to do. As this is a hosting server with customers on it i can not simply re-setup the server - but I already did this before.

The complete server hardware has already been exchanged (only raid controller and disk drives have been held).

Some customers have "baseportal" installed - I do not appreciate that but I cannot believe that this could cause those problems - should be in the logs then.


Could anyone maybe point me to the right direction? Thank you.

[peterpop]

Hey Croydon!

I have the same problem here.

The server is Dell branded with BNX2 and Intel lan cards with Debian Lenny amd64. Both lan cards are connected to same lan switch with different IP addresses. The server works for some hours up to a few days. Then the entire network stack stops working. Even ping 127.0.0.1 does not work. But the network stack is the only thing that hangs. Processes are still running well. Memory ok, processor ok. I made a script that reboots the server, every time that it is not possible to check the remote LDAP server.

I have tested with different kernel versions. I tested with only Intel gigabit. I tested with only BNX2 gigabit.

No errors on dmesg. No erros on messages.

No idea about what could cause this.

Can we try to find common settings in order to find what is wrong?

Any help is welcome!

Peter

[Croydon]

The last idea we had was to change the hardware raid controller - if that does not work I have no further idea.
I cannot check any more configs as we "smashed" the server and took a different one.