wan port dies - or not???

[piri]

hey!

I'm not sure if it's the famous "wan dies" issue but I have the following problem:

- Wl-500g running in Homegateway mode connected to Cable Modem with fixed IP and fixed DNS
- Running the busybox_httpd via firewall rule 8080 -> 80 from outside (in post-boot and post-firewall scripts)
- Running samba (in post-boot script)
- Running on Auto speed (don't know what speed my cable modem is running on)
- upgraded from 1.8.1.7-2a to 1.8.1.7-3 (must admit that the first upgrade failed so I did it a 2nd time and it succeeded then)

After that upgrade my WAN connection doesn't come up at boot time anymore, only pressing the "disconnect/connect" buttons (although it says "conneced" in the link status field) in the webconsole subsequently, connection is being established. After a short time of web browsing (no huge data transfers) WAN connection is lost again, bringing it back up only with the buttons in the web console.

Also tried

et -i eth1 down/up

(thought it's similar to the buttons...)
as well as

et -i eth1 speed 10half/10full/100half/100full

but with no effect, only buttons work.

Tried also the following with no effect:
- installing 1.8.1.7-3 in recovery mode
- resetting to factory defaults via web console
- downgrading to 1.8.1.7-2a
- installing 1.8.2.4
- setting number of max connections to 4096

Also typing

et -i eth1 dump

only brings up a "?" or an empty line, I don't know what that means...

The only thing I noticed is that all trouble begins when flashfs comes into work, i.e. after upgrading I set up the scripts and use flashfs (save, commit, enable, reboot) and after that WAN connection is lost.
Then the post-firewall script is not executed anymore and samba does not work (many smbd processes open up, but isn't this a different issue?...I also have two unknown "ping" processes, but I think I'm getting paranoid )

Sadly

flashfs disable

and rebooting doesn't do the trick either....

Could it be that I messed up flashfs upon the failed upgrade? Can I recover it in any ways or do a total cleanup? Is there a way to monitor when the WAN dies?

Meanwhile I don't know where to look at anymore and what to try next, all I tried didn't bring my any further....

cheers, thomas.