card reports no resources

Hi--
I am experiencing problems with intermittent network availability and 
repeated reports in /var/log/messages:   "eth0:  card reports no 
resources"  during times of network outage.  The computer is a Compaq 
workstation with a 500 MHz Pentium III, running RH7.2 with 2.4.7-10 kernel
the driver is the stock driver that came with RH:
Jul 31 11:53:21  kernel: eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker 
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/eepro100.html
Jul 31 11:53:21  kernel: eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 Modified 
by Andrey V. Savochkin <[email protected]> and others

and the hardware is :

sudo ./eepro100-diag -f -e
eepro100-diag.c:v2.06 12/10/2001 Donald Becker ([email protected])
  http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Intel i82557/8/9 EtherExpressPro100 adapter at 0x5400.
Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 EEPROM contents:
   Station address 00:50:8B:9F:D3:21.
   Receiver lock-up bug exists. (The driver work-around *is* implemented.)
   Board assembly 695327-001, Physical connectors present: RJ45
   Primary interface chip i82555 PHY #1.

I had been running this machine for months without any problems.  Two days 
ago I added an external SCSI DDR tape drive, and within a few hours after 
restarting the machine, I started seeing the "card reports no resources" 
messages in the system log, and experiencing intermittent network outages.

After perusing this mail list, and seeing several threads reporting similar 
problems, I tried the fix recommended by Donal Becker in one thread:
echo "100 500 200">/proc/sys/vm/bdflush
then rebooted.  I guess I don't understand the workings of the /proc file 
system, because the changes that resulted in /proc/sys/vm/bdflush didn't 
persist after the reboot, and I shortly started getting the same 
intermittent problems and more "..no resources" messages in the system 
log.  I repeated the changes to /proc/sys/vm/bdflush, but the problem did 
not go away, at least not immediately.

At this point, I'm not sure what to do next, so would appreciate any advice.


Thanks in advance



John Ketchum