Donna Garverick writes:

>(do i ever post questions *not* about network
>problems...?<sigh>)

Yes, you posted one about whether we could all get along. :-) (Although I
suppose that in several senses, that *was* a question about network
problems.)

>symptomatically, we'll see that the machine quit responding
>to external pings.  *if* i catch it fast enough, i can do a
>netcontrol...;update=internet and <tada> the machine starts
>answering pings.  what's more likely the case -- the
>machines have been in trouble for 'some time' (maybe 30
>minutes?) and now folks are complaining that 1) they can't
>logon (mostly likely via vt) or 2) they're getting dropped
>off the system (and the network dependent background jobs
>are hopelessly confused).  in this case, we'll see 'Could
>not initialize data in path with TCP' messages on the
>console coming from inetd.  (are we having enough fun yet?)
>another one or two 'netcontrol...;update=internet' *usually*
>takes care of the problem, btw.

Have you tried running nettool/resource? I have seen at least one case
similar to this where the outbound buffer pool was too small. The system
would sometimes not recover gracefully from an overflow condition.
Perhaps you could monitor network resource usage closely and see if
you're running up against one limit or another.

-- Bruce


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