Annoying 5.2.1 problem (em0 goes down)

[Hugo Silva]

Hi folks,

I have a Dual Xeon 2.8ghz w/ 4GB ram, 2x80GB hdd + 200GB hdd running
FreeBSD 5.2.1-p9 on a em0 network card.Every once in awhile, em0 will
simply die. These are the longs from the last time:

Jul 22 18:15:15 rhea kernel: em0: Link is up 100 Mbps Full Duplex
Jul 22 18:22:33 rhea kernel: em0: Link is Down

I find it weird, 'link is up 100mbps full duplex' @ 18:15, because the
system was up long ago before that message. As for the link is down
message, that is self explanatory. It never came back again. I bet this is
what happened this time too, will be sure when I get the datacenter to
reboot the server.

This always happens when I leave a ssh session idling for a long time. It
would be normal for the ssh session to timeout because the dynamic rules
on the firewall expire (assuming I didnt have keep alives), but the em0
interface goes down..

I am using the pf port instead of ipfw/ipfilter. I don't know if that has
anything to do with it.

Any ideas on what's causing this?

Regards,


Hugo