Ethernet Card Problem on Linux Server

[isaar]

I am having a problem with a Linux web server I created. Since I am unable to get any broadband connection where I live, I have placed the server at a friends house, with RoadRunner.

The issue I have been having is that if the Road Runner connection dies, the ethernet card does not re-initialize when the connection comes back. The quickest way to get the ethernet connection to work is to have my friend recycle the box, which is an anyonace, expecially when it happens just after he leaves for a two week vacation.

Does anyone have any ideas what to do to have the ethernet card recognize when the connection comes back up, and 're-initialize' itself?

Thanks

 

[pmcmicha]

You could have a script running in crontab every 5 minutes which would ping the router connection and if it fails, then it would create a flag file. The script would check for the flag file on subsequent runs so that when the network connection came back up and the flag file was found in say /tmp, then it would initiate a restart of all network services. Not sure what this would be in your linux distro, but in SCO unix, it is: /etc/inet/rc.restart. The script would then remove the flag file after verifying that the network services were restarted. That should work...

 

[timsr]

That's a kludge to fix a problem that should be dealt with in the module or kernel. We have the same problem at a customer site with 6 independent adsl connections. One problem has been PacBell. They would check the active connection because of the dydnamic address. If not active for a period of time they killed the connection. Unfortunately, that meant a reboot of the firewall. No other method seems to consistently find the adsl connection. They only "fix" is to have some "daemon" check the active connection. This "daemon" took the form of a cron entry. The kuldge works but is a poor fix for a problem that should be resolved by the os.

 

[isaar]

That kind of what I expected to do; have some script that pings a server, and if there is no response, attempt to restart eth0.

Has anyone been able to fix this with a driver update? I'm running a 3Comm Card, though I don't know what model off hand.

Also, does anyone have any scripts that monitor pings & restart the approriate services? I don't have the time to write & debug one at this moment.

Thanks for the help.