ssh/ethernet hanging...

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:37:58PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> The hardware is old.  Stand back and decide if debugging this is worth
> your time.  I know that I am guilty of chasing some problems too long.
> 
> You seem to be doing everything right: changing one thing at a time
> and retesting.
> 
> My recommendation would be to think of more things to change.
> 
> For example, try an old distro.  It may be that support for your old
> hardware has broken in recent distros and nobody has noticed because
> nobody uses it (or those that do are too lazy to report problems).
> 
> For example, try another thing to stress the network.  Like FTP
> perhaps.  (I imagine nc could be useful but I don't really know it.)
> If you can boil it down to a really simple stress test that narrows
> the field.
> 
> For example, go into the BIOS and reset all settings to the factory
> default (unless you know why they are set differently).
> 
> Bad power supplies sometimes produce mysterious symptoms.
> 
> Disconnect anything that isn't needed for the test.  Consider even
> reducing the RAM complement to the minimum.
> 
> Consider passing in odd kernel parameters that turn off magic
> features.  Eg. noacpi.  Sorry, I don't have a good list for you to
> try.  Maybe someone else does.  Lennart?

No, I have no idea what would make scp stop.  Does rsync work?
Does the target run low on disk space (I have seen reiserfs3 grind to
a halt when nearing 100% full but not quite there.  Things just took
forever but didn't fail because it wasn't quite full yet).

> Change the network topology?  Add, remove, or exchange switches?

-- 
Len Sorensen
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