B1000 sporadic network problems

[Terry Washington_1]

I am having sporadic network problems on a B1000. Every few days it loses the ability to bind to the NIS server and DNS stops working. This system also serves as an NFS server. During the network downtime NFS clients receive permission denied when trying to access the exports. During this time it takes about a minute or more to receive a login prompt when trying to access the system via telnet or rlogin. I have verified that the network port and lan0 are both set at 100-full. There are no collisions on the Cisco switch and no errors in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log. I usually reboot the box to fix the problem but would really like to know the actual cause. One other noteworthy fact is that the NIS and DNS servers (which run on the same machine) are on a different network. The IP address of the NIS/DNS server is listed in the hosts file. Is there anything else that I should check?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

There is no much to go on here but my best guess is that inetd is dying. Pretty much a dead giveaway is that if you can ping the box but nothing else works then inetd is not running.

I would look for and apply network/inetd related patches.

Pretty much a 'standard' cron job for me is to check that inetd is running and if not start it.

You can restart inet (from the console or serially connected terminal) by issueing /sbin/init.d/inet start.

[Steven E. Protter]

You can check logs as well.

/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log (11.X)

dmesg

might provide some information.

Take a look during the failure at the hub or switch your box is connected to. Is the connect light lit? What do the lights on the NIC of the workstation indicate?

This could be a problem with the physical network.

Another command

lanadmin -x 0

If its the only NIC card use 0 otherwise adjust.

Do the results of this command meet expectations? Are they the same as the switch or hub.

HP boxes hate networking conflicts with switches and hubs.

while its supposdely down

ifconfig lan0

Is there an IP adress assigned? Is the card up?

lanscan

Might give you some clues.



Whether or not any of these commands provide you a course of action, its always a GREAT idea to keep up on networking patches and drivers for your LAN card as noted in the prior post.

Regards,

SEP

[Ross Zubritski]

Hi.
Are your patch levels, inetd, arpa, etc. at the current levels. This issue reeks of a software issue.

Regards,

RZ

[Terry Washington_1]

Thanks for all of the responses.

[Terry Washington_1]

I found some patches at the link below but didn't see any that mentioned inetd or anythng network related. Is there somewhere else that I should be looking?

http://h20004.www2.hp.com/soar_rnotes/bsdmatrix/matrix44400en_US.html

[Tom Danzig]

Based on the following line in your post:

"During this time it takes about a minute or more to receive a login prompt when trying to access the system via telnet or rlogin"

This is a classic symptom of reverse lookup issues. You may want to verify all is well with DNS and your DNS server (if you have one) during the time the symtoms appear.

[Robert-Jan Goossens · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This is the homepage for hpux patches.

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/patch/search.do?pageContextName=hpux:::
keyword inetd , select hpux os and enter.

Kind regards,

Robert-Jan.

[Terry Washington_1]

Thanks for the additional info.