[PLUG] NFS losing server problem...

[frank hunt]

You should forget the hub and replace it with a switch.  Hubs are "dumb" 
devices with no arbitration capability which can lead to packet 
collisions, retransmissions, slower less efficient networking.  Hubs 
merely take the incoming signal and blast it out on all the other ports. 
  They also (I think I remember) run in only half-duplex.  If your 
network cards are not smart enough to figure out the duplex issue, you 
will have additional problems.



Michael C. Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-05-23 at 10:07 -0700, Wayne E. Van Loon Sr. wrote:
>> This may not be worth much, but can you ping in both directions and make 
>> sure that the IP addresses have not been changed by DHCP or anything?
>> Wayne
> 
> Apparently, you can't put a 10 mbps hub between a 10/100 Netgear switch
> and a 10mbps network card.  Taking the hub out, I got network booting,
> NFS root, to work.  I guess I'm going to have to buy another switch to
> replace the hub.  I thought that the hub made no difference, but I guess
> the switch isn't smart enough to transmit at 10 mbps to a hub where it
> is smart enough to transmit at 10 mbps to a network card.  I figure that
> this isn't a bad hub issue because I tried another one.
> 
> I could ping in both directions even with the hub, but that didn't mean
> that the hub wasn't a problem obviously.
> 
> BTW:
> There seems to be a bug with dhcp, the linux kernel, or pxelinux that is
> really annoying.  The root path gets ignored consistently and the kernel
> boot defaults to /tftpboot/<server_name>.  I got around this bug by
> making links to the proper directory named after the machines, but this
> is sort of an ugly kludge.  I thought that my backup dhcp servers were
> to blame, but unless the order of the options is the problem, all three
> servers have the root path option.  Anyone solve this problem?
> 
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-- 
frank hunt
(L0F) R0B-ZAR1
befuddled linux admin
erstwhile photographer
hillsboro oregon