> Physical connection is fine, I can ping both the Rabbit and the
> Server from ny worksation, and the packet sniffer shows the packets
> being sent from the Rabbit to the Server. This small network is
> flat, ie only using a hub for testing so I know there is no problem
> with switches.
That's fine - in "general" however, one cannot assume that because A
can reach B and A can reach C that that B can reach C.
Also, a clean ping does not always mean that duplex settings are fine
because a ping on an otherwise idle network does not try to have more
than one system access the network simultaneously.
> I'm going to drop a packet sniffer on the linux box to see what is
> going on there...
Excellent.
rick jones
And now for the insomniacs, some boilerplate on duplex:
How 100Base-T Autoneg is supposed to work:
When both sides of the link are set to autoneg, they will "negotiate"
the duplex setting and select full-duplex if both sides can do
full-duplex.
If one side is hardcoded and not using autoneg, the autoneg process
will "fail" and the side trying to autoneg is required by spec to use
half-duplex mode.
If one side is using half-duplex, and the other is using full-duplex,
sorrow and woe is the usual result.
So, the following table shows what will happen given various settings
on each side:
Auto Half Full
Auto Happiness Lucky Sorrow
Half Lucky Happiness Sorrow
Full Sorrow Sorrow Happiness
Happiness means that there is a good shot of everything going well.
Lucky means that things will likely go well, but not because you did
anything correctly

Sorrow means that there _will_ be a duplex
mis-match.
When there is a duplex mismatch, on the side running half-duplex you
will see various errors and probably a number of _LATE_ collisions
("normal" collisions don't count here). On the side running
full-duplex you will see things like FCS errors. Note that those
errors are not necessarily conclusive, they are simply indicators.
Further, it is important to keep in mind that a "clean" ping (or the
like - eg "linkloop" or default netperf TCP_RR) test result is
inconclusive here - a duplex mismatch causes lost traffic _only_ when
both sides of the link try to speak at the same time. A typical ping
test, being synchronous, one at a time request/response, never tries
to have both sides talking at the same time.
Finally, when/if you migrate to 1000Base-T, everything has to be set
to auto-neg anyway.
--
a wide gulf separates "what if" from "if only"
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...

feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...