> When you set the MTU, does it show up as set if you do 'ifconfig eth2'
> or whatever it is?

I can see it being set successfully.

> In what way *exactly* does the ping "just won't start"? Any error
> messages? If you run 'strace ping' where does it look like it all goes
> astray?

When I "ping 192.168.128.99 -s 9000", what I can only see is "PING 192.168.128.99 (192.168.128.99) 9000(9028) bytes of data.", nothing else.

But when I "ping 192.168.128.99 -s 8144", I can get "8152 bytes from 192.168.128.99: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=1.05 ms"