The setup. -Debian Woody with DSL connection (eth0) acting as router for NAT'd LAN (eth1) -Using dhc-client for DHCP on the DSL line
Everything was working fine until a reboot yesterday. Now the DSL connection is busted. During bootup, when eth0 is brought up, this is the first thing that appears: Eth0: Media is unconnected, link down, or incompatible connection. Now, I've been getting this message during bootup for a while now, but after a long period of time, the system would continue to boot up and the network connection would work normally. Not now, though. After a long timeout period, dhc-client prints out a lot of DHCP information that makes it look like it contacted the DHCP server correctly, but with a "Reason=TIMEOUT" line at the end that I haven't seen before. Once the box finished booting, Eth0 is listed as not being up. If I bring it up, I'm told that it's already up. If I ifdown it, then ifup it again, there's another "Media is unconnected error" and a return to a prompt, but the interface is listed as up after that. In the system log after I do that, I can see that dhc-client has gone through the DISCOVER, OFFER, REQUEST, ACK process, complete with a "Bound to 216.63.xyz.xyz" message. At this point, I can ping the IP of the DHCP server, and it works. I can ping random IPs on the same subnet (probably other DSL customers), and it works. But I can't ping the gateway address (216.63.148.0) or anything outside the subnet. I can't ping the nameservers, because they're on a different subnet. Pinging anything outside the subnet yields "Network Unreachable." Pinging the ISP's router yields no replies. The "route" command shows this: 216.63.148.0 * 255.255.254.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 I'm wondering if maybe the ISP's router (216.63.148.0) is just down, but this problem has persisted after nearly 14 hours, so I'd think they'd have noticed by now. Or it's possible that the router just ignores pings, and the problem is on my end. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions here. This Debian box is a web server and mail server and is considered "mission critical" (yeah, I know it's dumb to trust a DSL line for anything important, but times are tough), and I'll have some unhappy users to deal with if I can't get this worked out. Thanks a lot! ----------------------------------------------------- Protect yourself from spam, use http://sneakemail.com