2.4.28 neighbour/arp problem

[mmadore <mmadore@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am seeing some strange behavior with the changes to the neighbour/arp code that went into the 2.4.28 kernel.  When I first boot the system with 2.4.28, I cannot connect to other machines on my network.  If I print out the arp table, I will see something like this:

[root@node1 root]# arp
Address                  HWtype  HWaddress           Flags
Mask            Ifaceiserver.mynet.com                (incomplete)                              eth0
dns.mynet.com            ether   00:90:27:34:5F:6A   C                     eth0
iserver.mynet.com        ether   00:E0:81:04:DC:F0   C                     eth0

For some reason, the system I am trying to connect to shows up twice.  If I 
 bring
down eth0 and then start it again, I can then connect to the system.  Also, If I wait for a number of minutes, the (incomplete) entry will disappear from the arp table and I can connect to the system.

If I apply the attached path to backout the arp/neighbour changes, then everthing seems to work fine.

The problem only occurs with 2.4.28.  Both 2.4.27 and 2.6.9 work correctly.  Also, I have reproduced this issue on RedHat 7.3, 8.0, 9 and Fedora Core 1 (using 2.4.28) with both Intel e1000 and Marvell gigabit (sk98lin).

Let me know if I can provide additional information.

Mike