Re: Help! Slug takes down my network ...

I would grab something like ethereal and sniff the network while this is
happening. Just because the network light is flashing does not mean the
network is saturated. That will tell you what is actually going on so you
know where to look to fix it.

I would suspect a couple of things but there could be more:

- networking is just broken and it is flooding the network with bad
packets (jabber), if you have a switch or a good hub, it might be able to
partition things on its own and isolate the trouble.

- my most likely guess is that somehow the slug has grabbed a dhcp address
it shouldn't have, like the gateway, and the two nics are just fighting
over the ip. This causes the other computers not to work since they have
no gateway.

Even though I use dhcp for stuff like this, I still hard code the mac
addresses of the devices so they get specific ip addresses, but I can
manage them without going to every device and changing it.


>
>
> Well I thought I finally had my Slug under control. With the help of
> these Yahoo groups I've figured out how to clear hung backup jobs
> and I've been successfully backing up three computers on my home
> network. I got ssh and sudo installed for secure root access. I got
> ntpclient running per the HOWTO so it keeps good time.
>
> Then this morning my wife complained she could not print from her
> laptop. I verified this and also noticed she could no longer access
> the internet nor even bring up a Windows Explorer window.
>
> On a whim I pull out the Ethernet cable from my Slug. All of a
> sudden her computer works again, printing and surfing. I plug the
> Slug back into the network and it stops. I notice while the Slug is
> plugged in the network light on it is blinking constantly and so is
> the light for that port on my SMC 7004AWBR wireless router. I also
> notice none of the other computers in the house work.
>
> An Ethereal trace from one computer shows my router has stopped
> responding to ARP requests. If I unplug the Slug, ARPs work again.
>
> The Slug is running Unslung 3.18 and it does respond to the power
> button and shuts down. If I reboot it without the external drive
> attached it seems to boot up but immediately starts flooding the
> network again.
>
> The previous night I had made the /unslung changes to get ntpclient
> to work per the HOWTO. I rebooted then and verified everything
> worked. I also disabled UPnP that night. My backup jobs all ran fine
> from midnight to 3 am, while I was alseep, which I verified by
> checking the backup log through the Admin web GUI about 7 am.
>
> So in between 7 am and 9 am the Slug started this flooding behavior
> all by itself and has not recovered.
>
> Any ideas what could be going on? I've spend many hours in the wiki
> and searching forums to get this thing working in the first place as
> a backup device. It is frustrating that it only worked well for a
> few days.
>
> Since it is flooding the network I assume I can't use the Linksys
> Setup to flash it back to factory. Is there anything I could do at
> the Redboot prompt to recover? What about the Sercomm utility?
>
> Will this be a stable backup device for my network in the longterm?
> It is nice that it is a cool little Linux box to play with, but I
> did buy it to do an important job.
>
> Thanks for any advice.
>
> Nathan
>
>
>
>
>
> [ Moderator Note: All static information is slowly moving to the Wiki at
> http://www.nslu2-linux.org ]
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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>


Jon Pounder

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Thorold, Ontario, Canada

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[ Moderator Note: All static information is slowly moving to the Wiki at 
http://www.nslu2-linux.org ]