remote logins hang

[Marwan Fayed]

Hi,

I have a situation that is extremely peculiar. My problem is easily
described but not so easily diagnosed. When I login to my freebsd server
from a remote host (on local network), after a random amount of time the
connection just hangs -- unless I hit a key on the keyboard. The
connection just freezes and sits there
forever (or until the localhost resets the connection).

For example, I have a telnet/ssh window open with top running to
monitor load, the display eventually
freezes. Now let's say a minute passes and then I hit a key on the
server. Then the time displayed on top resumes exactly where it left off
(so no packets seem to be accumulating).

This happens whether telnetting, sshing, ftping, or any combination of
these. The server does not even respond to pings and traceroutes! But
somehow, hitting a key brings the machine "back to life". I am generally
the only user of the machine.

I have used netstat to check mbufs, lost packets, built custom kernels and
played with sysctl settings, all of which yeild no success so I can't even
think of any useful output to post! Just in case, I posted dmesg output to
"www.marwanfayed.com/dmesg.out"

PLEASE HELP!

Thank you,
--marwan

ps. This is an old p200MMX w/ 128M ram running 4.8R. It used to run 4.5R
quite happily until I upgraded by removing the stock hard drive so I can
boot from a larger drive connected to a PCI ide card (at which point I
installed 4.8R).  Again, thanks.


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"Theatre is not supposed to change the world,
 but it shows the world can change."
                                     --Ali Rafi'i
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