Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] Massive dropped connections - any ideas?
From: Christof Warlich (cwarlich@netzland.net)
Date: Wed Apr 21 1999 - 16:32:08 EDT
Hi Kevin,
I really appreciated reading your posting, because it at least gave me
hope
back that I´m not the only one in the world having exactely the same
problem.
It´s just 2 weeks ago when I posted this to netatalk-admins@umich.edu:
Christof Warlich wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I´ve recently upgraded my aged netatalk1.4b2 installation to
> netatalk1.4b2+asun2.13,
> and data transfer rates became fantastic compared to the old
> installation.
> But unfortunately, every some 10 minutes the Macs are loosing the
> connection
> to the server, which is a Linux box with a 3COM590 and kernel 2.036.
> Anyone out
> there who had the same problem and found a solution?
>
> Just because I´ve started to ask: I already tried to subscribe to the
> LINUX-ATALK
> list several times by sending a mail to listserv@netspace.org with no
> subject and a
> body which reads "SUBSCRIBE LINUX-ATALK", but I never got any response.
> What´s wrong?
>
> Thanks for any help, especially on the first problem.
>
> Christof
I got the following two responses (Thanks for the help, Jonathan and
Brad):
Jonathan Benson wrote:
> I suspect your card may be the problem. Check anything in the drivers to do
> with multicast.
>
> The best cards for use with netatalk seem to be those based on the Tulip
> chipset.
>
> Take a look at:
> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/tulip.html
>
> Regards
>
> Jonathan
>
> --
> Jonathan Benson B.Eng. (Soft Sys Hon) <tech@phoenixmags.com.au>
> Systems Administrator, Phoenix Magazines, Phone: +61 3 9696 7200
> http://www.phoenixmags.com.au/
Brad Cox wrote:
> Deleting any mac-style aliases on the mounted volume worked for me.
>
> Use unix ln -s instead.
>
> ---
> Dr. Brad Cox bcox@virtualschool.edu (update your address book)
> Phone: 703 361 4751 Fax: 703 995 0422 Cellular: 703 919-9623
> http://virtualschool.edu/mon A Project with Paradoxical Goals
> PGP Signature: E194 C6E5 92D8 B8FB 20E8 8667 929A 95A0 FCB6 7C62
I´m currently planning to give Jonathans suggestion a try, though I will
need another two month to really do it, because the machine in question
is at the printing office of my brother, 500km away from my home, and it
will take that long to be able to visit him again. Anyway, I´ll give a
report
on whatever I´ll experience then, at this list and to your email
address.
If you get any new information, please let me know.
Concerning the second part of my posting: You apparently have subsribed
to LINUX-ATALK, do you know why I can´t?
in thr hope that we get the porblem fixed,
Christof
Kevin Myer wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Awhile back, I had written that I was having problems with keeping
> Appletalk connections alive on a netatalk box. Suggestions were made that
> the problem was the ethernet card, client operating system or client
> etherent card. However, none of these seem to make sense and as I am
> hoping to move all our AppleShare stuff to a netatalk box, I really need
> to figure out what is causing this.
>
> First, the hardware:
>
> Originally, I was running this off of my own workstation, a homemade box
> with an AMD K6-2 300Mhz processor, 128Mb of RAM and a 3com 905b ethernet
> card. I was running kernels 2.1.x up through 2.2.1.
>
> Thinking it might be the ethernet card or machine, I switched the service
> to a box with dual Pentium II's running at 300Mhz with 512Mb of RAM and
> currently running kernel 2.2.3. The card is an Intel EtherPro 100+.
>
> Now the problem:
>
> On both machines, connections are randomly dropped. In some cases, there
> is massive connection dropping, i.e. a whole lab goes offline at the same
> time. In some cases, its just a matter of having a teacher log into the
> volumes again. In other cases, the server won't respond to Appletalk
> requests, although Appleshare IP requests work ok. In even other cases,
> the server won't respond at all. In the latter case, for whatever reason,
> all the netatalk related daemons have died (a good reason its not
> responding) but there's no clue in the logs as to why they died - just a
> slew of dropped connections and then silence.
>
> I have read reports that both of the ethernet cards I am using are
> troublesome when it comes to multicasting. I am not sure if that is my
> problem or not. I do have the Intel card compiled with
> multicast_filter_limit=3, which is supposed to take care of that problem
> and I am using the latest ethernet card drivers.
>
> I've read on these lists that people expereinced some Appletalk problems
> after upgrading to the 2.2.x kernel series and I noticed in the latest
> kernel release that there are Appletalk updates. However, I need to wait
> for a set of RAID patches against the 2.2.6 kernel before upgrading the
> server to see if that makes a difference.
>
> I believe I can effectively rule out the clients as the problem, as they
> all have six Appleshare volumes mounted off a Windows NT server that never
> go down. Although it wouldn't suprise me that NT does something not right
> to keep the connections alive, I have to assume that those connections are
> working properly and its the netatalk/Linux/ethernet card combo that is
> giving me trouble.
>
> This is really troublesome to try and justify to the librarians and
> supervisors that Linux is a good path to take, when stacked side by side
> with NT (at least for the Services for Macs part), NT is far more stable.
>
> I'm hoping someone can offer a suggestion to point me in the right
> direction, or confirm a kernel or netatalk bug, or at least say "Yes,
> I'm having that problem too".
>
> If I haven't provided enough useful information, ask. I'll be glad to
> supply it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin
>
> --
> ~ Kevin M. Myer
> . . Network/System Administrator
> /V\ ELANCO School District
> // \
> /( )\
> ^`~'^
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