FTP Download issues -- resolved

Fred puissante at lrc.puissante.com
Sat Jul 10 10:41:02 EDT 2004


FYI - Update on the download problem:

As you know, I've been pulling my hair out on this issue for a while. It
turned out to be a hardware fault -- the ethernet card (Linksys
EtherFast 10/100 LAN card) was flaky, partially functional, but not
completely. It appeared to work most of the time, but flake out in wierd
ways, such as not letting FTP downloads complete, and apparently had
been behind the issues I was having with NFS as well, etc.

So, I went out and purchased the CompUSA-branded 10/100 Ethernet
adapter. Why? Because it claimed support for Linux *right on the box*.
Cost the the whole of $14.99.

Got it home, installed it with eager glee, and it worked flawlessly. I
saw my access rates jump tremendously from the other card, and *no
download errors*. Yay.

Got curious and ran lspci to see what the card would say. It thus spake:

02:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

Which has direct support in the Kernel (which I rebuilt after seeing
this).

My only pet peeve in all of this is that the box did not mention this,
which would've made this a bit easier than the shot in the dark
approach. But all in all, I am happy with the results.

-Fred

On a side note -- I have 3 nVidia Geoforce 2 graphics cards in my
system, running off the accelerator driver I got from nVidia. You've got
to run the install script every time you rebuild the kernel.
Fortunately, I run Linux with runlevel 3 and simply use startx to bring
up Xwindows, so this was easy to fix. So now it's back off to playing
Tux Racer. :-) Now all I need is a Linux game that can take advantage of
a system with multiple monitors. If you know of any, let me know!

On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 17:09, Fred wrote:
> Mkie & Ben, thanks for the suggestions.
> 
> I was hoping for a "simple" solution, one that would not involve me
> spending a whole day doing a "bug" hunt. Yes, I should try this from
> different computers and the like.
> 
> Mike, your MTU problem may be related to what I am seeing, though I'm
> not using PPPoE. Something somewhere in the path must be getting hung up
> on packet sizes or related. Ben, your data-dependent line problem may be
> playing a role, too.
> 
> At least I have two new avenues to attack this issue on now. I just wish
> I had more time to pursue it. Come to think of it, I am having another
> wierd problem, this one involving an ssh connection being used by CVS
> connecting to a server on the LAN, but through an external IP address,
> which may be related. Doing a traceroute points it directly to the
> Linksys router, which is doing port forwarding to one of my Linux boxes.
> Hmmm... perhaps I should just junk and replace it. I've had other weird
> problems with it before. I've already relieved it of handling DHCP,
> because it couldn't do that AND handle a high packet throughput at the
> same time.
> 
> Thanks again.
> 
> -Fred

-- 
Fred -- fred at lrc.puissante.com -- place "[hey]" in your subject.
There are inflows and outflows -- and you're just a little node.
Know then, what transcendental sets have you.



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