[mythtv-users] OT: NIC going away.

[Mike Perkins]

On 08/02/12 07:10, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:07 PM, R. G. Newbury<newbury at mandamus.org>  wrote:
>> The network has started to fail mysteriously in my mythbox.  No messages
>> of any sort: all contact with outside units fails. "hdhomerun_config
>> discover" returns 'no devices found'.
>>
>> And nothing seemed to bring the network back except a re-boot. (That
>> might be important, I think). 'Service network restart' does nothing, as
>> do 'ifdown eth0' and 'ifup eth0'. Once it's gone away, I get 'network
>> unreachable' from pings etc. etc.
>>
>> I set up a cron to 'hdhomerun_config discover' every minute. And it
>> worked for quite a time: from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning. Then,
>> communications failed. Oddly there was one minute a few hours later when
>> the network worked, but then nothing until I rebooted earlier tonight.
>> See below.
>>
>> No power failures, and swapping cables made no difference.
>>
>> This box has run dependably for at least 3 years. Does anyone know
>> whether ethtool? anything? could help diagnose this?
>>
>> Or is another NIC a necessity for this box' future?
>
> modprobe -r [module that makes it work]
> modprobe [ditto]
>
> NICs are cheap, pci slots aren't for most backends. Bugger.
>
An alternative if you don't plan to change your motherboard - or can't afford to 
- may be to use a USB NIC. These can be had reasonably cheap these days.

Always worth keeping one around to use when diagnosing network problems.

-- 

Mike Perkins