I'm running Seti@home version 3.03 for i686-pc-linux-gnu-gnulibc2 with
Mandrake 9.1 (2.4 Enterprise kernel). Hardware is a 2.4 GHz P4 with 1 GB
of ram on an Abit BE7 mainboard. The modem is a Conexant winmodem with the
HSF chipset. I'm using the Linuxant
hsflinmodem-5.03.27lnxtbeta03042700-1.i386.rpm modem driver. The Mandrake
specific modem RPM did not work with the Enterprise kernel (which I have
to use, due to having 1 GB of ram).

Here's the problem. Occasionally, while connected to the Internet *and*
running Seti@Home, my throughput unexpectedly drops to absolutely zero.

The symptoms:
1. Dial up connection (kppp) throughput drops to zero, but shows as still
connected according to the taskbar icon. Kppp statistics confirms zero
traffic in or out, no matter what website I try to reach. (I haven't tried
ping, will try that next time).

2. Once the problem occurs, closing Firestarter (the firewall) makes no
difference regarding throughput.

3. state.sah (a plain text seti at home file) will not open, instead the
"open with" dialog pops up. After selecting Kwrite to open the file it
does so, but it opens as a blank file with no data. Other plain text files
are unaffected.

4. Once the problem occurs, closing SAH makes no difference regarding
throughput (although let me emphasize that this problem never pops up when
I am not running seti at home).

5. Closing (disconnecting) kppp and then attempting to reconnect results
in:

   a. The "Connecting to: Dialup Connection" box says "Looking for modem"
   and hangs there. The computer does not stop responding, but kppp does.
   Clicking the "x" of any of the kppp windows does not close the program.

   b. Xkill will kill the kppp window, but attempting to restart kppp
   after killing it with Xkill results in this error:

"kppp has detected a /home/username/.kde/share/apps/kppp/kppp.pid file.
Another instance of kppp seems to be running under process-ID 2092. Please
click Exit, make sure that you are not running another kppp, delete the
pid file, and restart kppp. Alternatively, if you have determined that
there is no other kppp running, please click Continue to begin."


6. So I close kppp and then delete
/home/username/.kde/share/apps/kppp/kppp.pid 
After that, restarting kppp results in a repeat of 5.a as described above.

The only fix I've found is to use Xkill to kill kppp, then reboot.

After the reboot, there are usually two open kppp dialup connection
dialogs. I close those and open a new one. After that, all is normal until
the next time it happens (which can be days or weeks).

Since BOINK was due to replace Seti@Home I with Seti@Home II Real Soon, I
was just going to put up with this occasional yet annoying problem. But
Real Soon has stretched into many months and I tire of this glitch.

If anyone has any suggestions, or even which logs to check for clues, I'd
be very grateful.

-- 
Tony Sivori