I am pulling my hair out.
It is hard to say where it all started, but this is where I am. I had been running a beta of SME 7, upgraded through several betas and then RC1 and recently RC2. I have a Shuttle P-4 mother board with a Via chipset. There is an onboard Ethernet interface and I have a 3-Com 3c509. I normally use the 3-Com as the LAN interface and the Via as the WAN.
What happens is occasionally I lose my internet connection through the SME server. All status lights on my switch and DSL modem seem normal. Sometimes I still have LAN access, sometimes not. If I logon to the console and do an ifconfig sometimes I only see the lo interface, sometimes lo and only one of the Ethernet controllers (when it is working properly, of course I see lo and both Ethernet controllers). When I go to the admin console and go to configure this server, it sees both controllers. If I swap the LAN and WAN controllers, and of course the cables, after the reboot normally it works fine for a while and then I have to re-do that exersise.
I had suspected that the Via chipset or some other weirdety of the motherboard was causing the issue (not to slam Via, but I have had issues with Via ethernet and DSL/Cable modems in the past). I swapped out the Shuttle for another P-4 board that was pulled from a Gateway box (I think it has an Intel chipset) and did an update install of 7.0rc2. Now I have two 3c509s. It all seems to be working light wise on the switch and modem, but I still have only the lo interface, no LAN and no WAN access.
Any guesses?
Bill