I've got two boxes, both which uses the forcedeth-driver as the driver for the network cards. I've got the same problem on both boxes. I've tried various kernels, the latest kernel on my amd64-box is 2.6.22-7 from gutsy (ubuntu).
The problem is as follows: Once the interface is up, it seems to be working ok, after a little while with traffic (not much) it becomes "off and on" when it comes to response. If my ssh-session has been idle for a minute or two, and I hit two keys, key number two will be displayed after some sort of timeout (30 sec -> 1 minute). Then it becomes reponsive while I use the session, until I idle again. After a little while with this behaviour it just becomes totally unresponsive, and I have to restart the network-device (networking restart) to be able to connect to the box again. This is all on eth0. One of my boxes (amd64-box) is using Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe as the motherboard, this has two NICs (same chip on both NICs), and eth1 doesn't have this problem at all, just eth0. So when eth0 dies, I can just connect through eth1 and restart the network, and eth0 becomes responsive again. But the problem is there still, after a bit. Since I've had two completely different setups, where one of the few common factors was the forcedeth.c, and I've seen a few posts around by other people mentioning the same problems, it seems that the driver has some bugs or is missing some key functionality for eth0 to become a usable NIC. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know, and I'll help. I really want to fix this, so I can use both NICs, and we can get rid of this error once and for all :-) This is from lspci, identifying the two NICs: 00:10.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a2) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device cb84 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 509 Memory at fe02a000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] I/O ports at b400 [size=8] Memory at fe029000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Memory at fe028000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [70] MSI-X: Enable- Mask- TabSize=8 Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask+ 64bit+ Queue=0/3 Enable+ Capabilities: [6c] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping 00:11.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a2) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device cb84 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 508 Memory at fe027000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] I/O ports at b000 [size=8] Memory at fe026000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Memory at fe025000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [70] MSI-X: Enable- Mask- TabSize=8 Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask+ 64bit+ Queue=0/3 Enable+ Capabilities: [6c] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping -- Thomas - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html