Re: Intermittent connection problems

on 11/16/2004 6:56 PM Alston, Steve said the following:

> I've used Smoothwall for a couple of years now with no problems however I've
> been having this intermittent problem for a few weeks now.
> 
> I have a smoothie 2 with fixes 4 on a P133 with a 130M ram and a 2Gb HD
> connected through an STB to  The ACT's Transact network (My ISP is Netspeed)

xDSL, right?

> The whole system is usually totally reliable but since I rebuilt my PC with
> XP+SP2, I lose http connections and/or can't connect to the ISP email
> servers.
> 
> I can often read my mail using webmail in Firefox when Thunderbird is telling
> me the mail server is unavailable. Or download mail when the browser doesn't
> work. Or update software like Norton's utillities when mail and browsing
> refuse to work.
> 
> At first I assumed that the ISP's DNS server was playing up but swapping to
> others doesn't help.
> 
> The XP box is fairly std and protected (SP2, Zonealarm free, Avast! AV,
> SpybotSD etc) so I can't really see that being a problem, particularly since
> the problem seems to occur with my XP laptop too.

Ah!  A belt, *and* suspenders!  Have you tried disabling Zone 
Alarm?

> I was coming to the conclusion that there may be a hardware problem somewhere,
> but since I usually get some connectivity that seems unlikely.
> 
> The logs don't seem to show anything unusual.  Is there any possiblity of
> smoothie randomly stopping valid traffic?
> 
> Any other suggestions at all?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Steve

If Netspeed is a xDSL connection, make sure you look closely 
at the PPP logs.  Mine have been known to show entries such as:

01:33:06 pppd No response to 3 echo-requests
01:33:06 pppd Serial link appears to be disconnected.
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd Connection terminated.
01:33:06 pppd Connect time 10255.4 minutes.
01:33:06 pppd Sent 2312817447 bytes, received 4225756291 bytes.
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd Using interface ppp0
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store key failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store key failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppd Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyp1
01:33:06 pppd tdb_store failed: Corrupt database
01:33:06 pppoe read (asyncReadFromPPP): Session 55004: 
Input/output error
01:33:06 pppoe Sent PADT

...

If you see similar entries, disconnect your PPPoE connection, 
rename (or remove) /var/run/pppd.tdb and reconnect.  All 
should be well until the DB becomes once again corrupt.

Good luck!

-Adam
_______________________________________________
gpl mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.smoothwall.org/mailman/listinfo/gpl

SmoothWall Stash - Buy Our Stuff! http://cafepress.com/smoothwall