Once again, the network connection failed on my Linux machine. No helpful error messages, no warnings … nothing of use to a prole like me. But a reboot “solved” the problem. Oddly, once again, my Windows box was a sanity check, as it continued to maintain the connection, even through resetting both the cable modem and the router.
Gads. Is Linux becoming more like (classic?) Windows, for better and for worse?
Much fun this fine evening.
I had to reboot the machine today — doing some work that required the electricity to that room to be shut off — and after rebooting, I noticed that the network connection would go down. There was nothing in /var/log/messages. I could restart the connection (/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart), and ping my router (192.168.0.1) for a while. But within 45 seconds to 3 minutes, the connection would be lost.
Oddly, I could do a broadcast ping (ping -b 192.168.0.255), and see other machines on my network.
After a while, I ventured over to my newest laptop, given to me yesterday at my company, which had a nice helpful error message, that there was another machine on the network with the same IP address.
I’m shocked … shocked, I tell you. Because for the first time, in my 12 years of Linux usage, I found Linux to be harder to diagnose than Windows (this was XP). Would it really have been that difficult for Linux to add a nice little message, saying the same thing?
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