Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 08:15:52 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Ned Harrison <ned.woody@cox.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Frequent loss of contact with ISP Message-ID: <20050322081552.54bb864f.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <200503212001.58780.ned.woody@cox.net> References: <200503201531.18590.ned.woody@cox.net> <20050320165526.3173a27a.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <200503212001.58780.ned.woody@cox.net>
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[My apologies to the moderator for the traffic, but I just unsubscribed, and I didn't want to leave this person hanging.] Ned Harrison <ned.woody@cox.net> wrote: > On Sunday 20 March 2005 09:55 pm, you wrote: > > Ned Harrison <ned.woody@cox.net> wrote: > > > I reciently upgraded my home computer to FreeBSD 5.3 p5. Sense then I've > > > had minor problems connecting to my ISP. During boot up it will > > > sometimes freeze at the line, "Configuring syscons: keymap blanktime." or > > > I'll lose contact with my ISP while sending an email or surfing the web. > > > From an earlier posting to this forum I found that "Ctrl+C" will let the > > > system finishing the boot up. Then I can easily connect to my ISP by > > > running "/etc/netstart" as root. > > > > > > Everything works fine at least for a while. However, sooner or later > > > I'll lose the conection again. I have not been able to discern a pattern > > > to the disconnects either. Yet as soon as I run netstart again > > > everything works again. It can be hours before I the lose the connection > > > or sometimes I'll lose the connection again within twenty minutes. I've > > > searched for a permanent fix by looking throught this forum. But I > > > havn't found anything yet. Though that might be because I don't quite > > > know how to search! :-) > > > > > > I am a newbie using FreeBSD so any suggestions would be appreciated. > > > > Spend a little time in the /var/log directory and see if anything is being > > logged around the time you lose connection. > > > > Also, more clearly defining "lose connection" would help. What does > > ifconfig say when the connection is up and when it's down? The > > difference between those two outputs may lead you toward a solution. > > Thank you for the suggestions. I've scanned the log files and didn't see any > unusual error messages. But that could be because I don't know what to look > for. I've run FreeBSD for just about one year and had no Unix experience > prior to that at all. I jumped from Windows, where somebody did everything > for me to, FreeBSD where I have to figure things out on my own with only > hints and suggestions. (Honestly, I find it funner this way!) I'll check to > logs next time it goes down. > > I copied the results from ifconfig when everything is working to a file. As > soon as I "lose the connection" I'll run ifconfig again. > > To get more defined regarding the loss of connection, it's almost as if I > typed "ipfw flush" as root and cut myself down to the default "deny > everything" rule. Sent emails will set unprocessed in the queue, when > attempting to download e-mail, K-mail will return an unknown host error > message, web browsers will either open to a blank white page or give me an > invalid ULR error message. It even went down while viewing a video on Xine. > The video just stopped, then I got an "invalid host" error message. As soon > as I type /etc/netstart. Boom! everythings up an running as if nothing was > ever wrong. I saw your other email as well, which shows that ifconfig during up/down is the same. That means that you're not losing your IP address, and the fact that /etc/netstart fixes the problem probably means it's not hardware related. So the next steps are to tear apart the networking system and figure out exactly which part of it is shutting off. First, do these: 1) Copy /etc/resolv.conf to your home dir: this contains your DNS server information. 2) Save the output of `netstat -rn` (use something like `netstat -rn > /home/<username>/netstat.txt` This is your routing table. Now ... the next time it goes down, check: 1) Did /etc/resolv.conf change? 2) Did the output of `netstat -rn` change? 3) In the netstat output will be a line that starts with "default", see if you can ping that IP address - if not, then the problem is probably with your switch/hub or other local network. 4) Try pinging 206.190.36.122 (that's the ip for story.news.yahoo.com), if it works, then the problem is likely with DNS. 5) if #4 works, try pinging story.news.yahoo.com ... if that fails, then DNS is almost certainly the problem, if that works, then the problem is somewhere in the network config, or application config. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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