Hi, Hmmm, but why should a soft reboot *not* allow new modules to be loaded (as I did a reboot after the kernel update), and a hard reboot do the business? Actually I think this is a bit of red herring, I think this is a problem relating to the CK804 chipset. It gets into a state whereby it is switching itself on and off - looking at the 3com switch the link status indicator was going on and off every 2 seconds or so. Hence it looked like there was no network connection. And the hard reboot "fixed" this. As a general point what do people recommend as the kernel module for the NICs on the Nforce4 chipset (most mobos have a CK804 chipset and a Marvell gigabit chipset) are there more/less reliability issues with one or other of these two? Best wishes, Jon John E. Perry wrote:

Jonathan Brooks wrote:

...

Okay please ignore my previous email - a hard reboot fixed it(?). God know why.

I had the same experience last year when a security update to my 9.3 system included a kernel upgrade.

The problem, I think, was that the modules got moved into the active directory when I upgraded the kernel, and it took a while for me to notice that some services were dying when they restarted. I had forgotten to reboot my computer, and the old kernel was trying to load the new modules.

A reboot loaded and started the new kernel, and everything worked fine after that.

John Perry

-- Jonathan Brooks (Ph.D.) Research Fellow PaIN Group, Department of Physiology Anatomy & Genetics Le Gros Clark Place, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QX tel: 01865-282654 fax: 01865-282656