A different 3Com Failure

["James D. Meacham" <jmeacham@REMOVEME.hume.jhuccp.org>]

Hey all,

HAving convinced my boss, an NT guy, to let me do network backups with a
VXA-1 66 GB tape drive and a Linux (suse 6.3) backup server, I have had
just one problem after another (which I've never really had before...I
mean, we have 8 running linux server that were more or less plug and play
[or install and play]).  First, I couldn't find a combination of SCSI
cards and ethernet cards that would work together in an old P90.  Then,
after switching to a P200, I got everthing woking fine on the
surface.  I'm using the 3Com vortex PCI card.  So when I'm doing these
huge backups over the network using Arkeia (which we thought would be
reasonably priced but turns out backing up 10 machines'll cost us
$3000 so we're gonna try AMANDA) I get scads of the following error:

Feb 24 16:50:05 isgback kernel: eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00
status e000.   

till finally the connection dies and the backup fails.  This seems like it
is a driver issue, though I've gotten similar messages on other machines
that are running the Intel PCI EtherExpress 10/100 (the driver for which,
come to think of it, was written by the same guy).  Has anyone else had
these kind of issues and is there a fix for it?  Do I need to order a new
card with a better driver, and if so, any suggestions?  Thanks,

Peace,

James