TCP/IP dies and won't resurrect

[Jim Gottlieb]

We have a network of 386 machines, mostly running Interactive 2.0.2
with Interactive 1.2 TCP/IP and NFS.  The network is still in the
experimental stage.  We have / of each of nine machines mounted on the
tenth.  But there is almost no traffic across the network.

The problem is that at random we find that all network services on a
particular machine have died.  I bring the machine down to init level
2, then back up to 3.  At this point I get flooded with error messages,
starting with:

cp: cannot create /dev/netsched
cp: no such device
tcp timer failed

I have looked at the permissions and major/minor numbers of netsched,
udp, arp, ip, and tcp in the /dev directory and they look the same as
on working machines.  I have tried rm'ing them so that the programs can
recreate them.  I also tried running /etc/conf/bin/idmknod.  Even if I
can get past this problem, I then get errors about streams.

The only solution I've found is to reload Streams, TCP/IP, and NFS in
that order.  Any better solutions would be welcomed.  Thanks.