Tracing silent crashes

[John Ackermann N8UR]

I have a remote machine running Debian testing and kernel 2.4.21, that 
operates in headless mode (no keyboard or monitor attached).  At random 
times, it seems to die, at least as far as any network connectivity is 
concerned (the NICs are SMC 9342 using the epic100 driver).  It simply 
stops responding to any network request.  I have a clue (difficult to 
verify because of the remote location) that the machine doesn't actually 
crash, and that the local console remains accessible; in other words, it 
may just be a freeze of the networking stack.

There doesn't seem to be any correlation to time of day, and sometimes I'll 
go weeks without this happening, when other times it may be a daily 
occurrence.  The machine is on a UPS, so it's probably not power glitch 
related.  I've swapped NIC units, though not varieties.  And, it's been 
happening for a while, though I run apt-get dist-upgrade fairly regularly, 
and across kernel versions, so I don't think it's due to any new software 
change.

Upon reboot things return to normal and there's no trace of anything in the 
logs to indicate what the problem.

I guess I have two questions -- does anyone recognize this problem, and is 
there any way to capture more data that might give me a clue about what's 
happening.  The normal log files don't yield a clue.

Thanks,

John

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