card sleeping

[kalin m]

hi all..

recently i had to change the static ip on a machine here at work. 
nothing wrong with that. what's happening with this new ip (different 
network) is that for short periods of time sometimes the machine is 
unpingable. until i try to login ssh. as soon as i do that the ping and 
the rest of network activity resumes - http.

that didn't use to happen on the previous network. the only change was 
the network information. also a bunch of other machines changed at the 
same time and none of the others present the same situation.

the only entry in the log is:
init: can't exec getty '/usr/local/bin/xdm' for port /dev/ttyv8: No such 
file or directory

(if somebody would explain what this is, that would help too. since xdm 
is not really in use and i can't find anything that would be calling xdm.)

not sure if this has any importance but the card itself is BCM5750A1 
NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express according to pciconf.

the machine is 7.2 release.

where do i look?



thanks...