Unfortunately I'm still able to reproduce this problem in 2.6.33. However, when my ethernet interface crapped out nothing was logged to /var/log/messages. Doing an ifdown and then ifup did not restore the interface, it was unable to get a lease from the DHCP server (all other machines on the network were fine). So, same end result, although I don't have the evidence to suggest that the symptoms are the same....
Unfortunately I'm still able to reproduce this problem in 2.6.33. However, when my ethernet interface crapped out nothing was logged to /var/log/messages. Doing an ifdown and then ifup did not restore the interface, it was unable to get a lease from the DHCP server (all other machines on the network were fine). So, same end result, although I don't have the evidence to suggest that the symptoms are the same....