On Wed, 1 May 2002, Ken Thompson wrote: > 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.
Have you tried disconnecting all machines then adding them individually? If there's a bad card it could be flooding your network with junk and causing retransmits. Do you have a Fluke handy to test the cables? I've seen *lots* of cable that has been incorrectly paired. I.e., the "technician" assumed that since it was a straight through connection the order of the wires didn't matter. You might also try putting a sniffer in place to see if it's just traffic causing the problem. > 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.)... When the network is dormant, do you still see lots of traffic? Is this a 10/100 switch? I.e., is it an actual switch or a hub? > 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. Aiieee!! This is the consummate Windows "enjuneer" -- enable everything and pray that it works. > 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 > ! ! Try using a PCI NIC in the micron? If the card is failing and storming the network you could notice this behaviour. > 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. Still sounds like cabling... Can you browse TCP/IP at reasonable speed? I.e., try enabling apache on the Linux box and putting a few large files up for download. > 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? Sounds coincidental... > 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. Have you replaced the cables? With only 6 machines the switch shouldn't be a problem, but have you swapped it out just in case? Unless you're doing lots of transfers, even a regular hub should work fine. Also, check to make sure that a cable wasn't inadvertently placed in the uplink port. > 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???? > I've noticed lots of weirdness with Samba and WinME shares. Win98, 98SE, NT, Win2K machines all connected fine, but whenever I network browsed with WinME the systems would crawl so badly that the machine appeared to be hung. It seems to be a recurring problem and I've tried everything from setting the entire network to full/half duplex, twiddling with oplocks in Samba, disabling network virus scans, replacing NICs. If I assign drive letters to network mounts and access the windows shares *only* through the mapped drive, it does seem to improve. TCP/IP seems fine but SMB completely drags down the machine.
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