Hello all, I'm working with a 6 computer network that is doing some very wierd things..... First a bit of history: Current O/S's Win98, WinME, Win XP, Linux Mandrake 8.1. The original network was smaller and set up using Novell. NIC's on the older computers are DEC Chip combo's, some even have the 25 pin AUWI (?sp) port and were all using 50 ohm coax connections. The owner hired a "network specialist" to set it up to use "Windows Networking". This fellow put in a LinkSys 8 port switch, and ran CAT 5 cable around the baseboards of the office, installed all available network protocols (NetBui, TCP, Netbios/IPX &etc.)... TCP/IP was set up using DHCP on all machines and no IP ranges set. Some of the machines, then, were found using NetBUI, some on IPX/SPX and some with TCP/IP. I found this out by removing each protocol in turn except for TCP/IP. OK, but it worked and he was kinda happy except the network was SLOW, A factory re-furbed Micron PIII 800 with onboard NIC was used as the "file server" and all the network programs data paths set to it. Most of the machines on the network could log on to each other in an accecptable time (3-4 seconds) but the Micron would take over 1minuet to log on to any other machine (open Network Neighborhood and wait). But other machines found the Micron OK and could pull files off it as fast as any other. About now you're asking what has this got to do with a Mandrake Mailing List ! ! Read on folks, it get's better.. Dumb me, I said "I can fix that and use a Linux box as a file server"... First I removed all un-needed protocols and set up static IP address for each system. No speed improvement ! !. The rest of the network seemed usable but the Micron was still very slow, my reaction was naturally to blame the Micron. I brougt it to my service department and performed a complete O/S teardown and re-install (Win98se), set it up on my network and tested it hard using the same program he uses PLUS some very large file transferes (1Gb and over), It worked like a charm -fast- reliable &etc. Put it back in service and got him back to work. At this point the network seemed perfect, no hang ups and speed was good. Next thing was to put together a Linux box to use as a file server. Used a Super 7 MoBo, K6-2 350 CPU 3.2Gb HDD and 196Mb mem, installed Mandrake 8.1 on it. KDE is available but I start it in RL 3 and don't log in as anyone, just let the screen blank and forget it.. He has no security concerns (read don't want to be bothered) so MSEC is set to "poor". The Mandrake machine is not on the internet and they only go online with the others to get credit reports and then off right away, total time for each instance less than 10 min. Again I set the box up on my network and ran it "'till it dropped" NO problemo...... Durn thing was perfect......... Put the Linux box in service, changed the data path's to it and walked out very self satisfied... The next day I was "hangin' out" and one of the systems locked, the salesman tried to reboot it and it said "can't find boot record on IDE0" EH? Wot's this? I looked at it and Nope nuthin', ran "FDISK" and there was NO partition defined. Brought the machine to my service department and diagnosed it with bad memory, (it wouldn't even trigger the video until I replaced the mem mdule) replaced the mem module, re-installed WinME, ran the same tests as with the other ones and put it back in service. Whew, things were working good. (I was a bit dis-satisfied because I still couldn't accout for the missing partition) The owner calls me 3 days later saying he can't get his "backup" to transfer over the network, it says "network resource not available" about 75% through the transfer (about 30Mb file size). I thought " he just don't remember how I showed him to do it" and went out to see what had gone wrong. NOW the whole network is slow, the Micron being the slowest but not substantially so. Can't pull a large file from any given machine to any other and have some file corruption on the Linux box (I can see the file name but the program can't run the executible or unzip one it needs) I have looked at everything I can think of trying to figure out what in the world went wrong, I'm leaning towards interference on the cables but really don't know what to think at this point. After a complete re-make of the network, running fine for about a week, it's worse than it was when I started. Ideas, anyone???? -- Ken Thompson, North West Antique Autos Payette, Idaho Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nwaa.com Sales and brokering of antique autos and parts.
Linux- Coming Soon To A Desktop Near You Registered Linux User #183936
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