New DL580 G4 Install Network Issues

[Dan Burras]

Just installed 2 new DL580 G4 systems. Have them both on the network and I can ping gateways, devices on other subnets, and on the internet. However, I cannot open webpages to any sites internal or external, nor can I telnet to any devices. Firewalls are turned off. I can open the internal systems management webpage, so I know IE's working. No proxy servers are setup--right now systems have direct internet access. Two other HP DL380 G5s installed on the same subnet work just fine, so we know it's not a networking issue.

Any ideas on what might be keeping me from being able to communicate via http or telnet?

Thanks in advance...

[Ivan Ferreira]

>>> Firewalls are turned off.

This really looks like a firewall issue. In which locations did you verify that the firewall is not blocking traffic?

What is the error that you get when you try to connect via telnet to the default port 23 or port 80?

telnet remoteserver
telnet webserver 80

[Dan Burras]

Verified that windows firewall was turned off in the control panel. Service is not running.

Verified that the subnet that the systems are on is outside our network firewall. The system that I am currently trying to access it from is also outside of the firewall.

We are not trying to telnet or http into the server box. We are trying to go from the server to other devices (both http and telnet).

[Dan Burras]

As for your other question, when trying to open any webpage or telnet session to another device from the servers, comes back with a cannot find server error. This is the same whether we try to access the devices via their DNS name or actual IP address.

[Ivan Ferreira]

This looks extrange, I would install a network protocol analyzer, like ethereal, setup a filter and capture the packets between the hosts to try to identify what is going on with the network connection.

[Ron Kinner]

Start, Run, cmd.exe, OK to bring up a new cmd window. Type with an enter after each line:

tracert -d 212.187.255.8

(this is a traceroute to f1.com which I just use because it allows traceroutes. Does it work?)

telnet 212.187.255.8 80

(If it connects then screen will clear)

a

(Screen will fill with odd characters and you will see a line that says: "the server does not support the action requested by the browser" and it will disconnect. Does that work?)

nslookup att.com

(Does that come back with something like this:


Name: hp.com
Addresses: 192.6.165.40, 192.6.234.17, 192.6.234.18, 192.6.234.19
15.200.2.21, 15.200.30.21, 15.200.30.22, 15.200.30.23, 15.200.30.24
)

ipconfig /all

(make sure you only have one default gateway assigned and that it's on the network that goes to the internet. Make sure you have the IP address and mask you think you do.)

regedit

(this brings up the registry editor, find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\URL

Under this should be two keys DefaultPrefix and Prefixes. If you click on DefaultPrefix you should see in the right pane that the default is http://
if not make it that way.

Click on Prefixes and you should see a list of prefixes in the right pane:
ftp => ftp://
gopher => gopher://
home => http://
mosaic => http://
www => http://
if not make it that way.

Close everything, reboot into Safe Mode with networking and see if it works then. IF that helps then Start Run, msconfig, OK
Go to Services tab and click on the box to hide Microsoft Services then uncheck everything that remains. Go to Startup tab and uncheck everything. OK and reboot. If IE doesn't work then go back into msconfig and recheck the things you turned off. If it helps then go back and turn on a few items each time until you find the culprit.\

If all seems to be OK then download firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
on another PC, burn it to a CD and install it on your sick PC. IF it works then uninstall IE and download and install IE7 from microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx

Ron

[Dan Burras]

Ron,

Ran with your suggestions and tried them all out. Here's what I was able to find out...

1) Was able to successfully traceroute all the way through to f1.com.
2) Could not telnet to the f1 server.
3) nslookup of att.com timed out initially but worked fine on a second attempt.
4) ipconfig showed that only a single gateway is configured on the box (only 1 network card is physically connected at this time)
5) Checked settings through regedit and all prefixes were as they should have been.
6) Booted into Safe Mode with Networking but that did not resolve the issue.

Any other thoughts?

[Ron Kinner]

If the telnet to f1.com port 80 doesn't work but the tracert does, that sort of points at a firewall or router/switch access list somewhere that doesn't want you to go out on port 80.

You said your nslookup failed the first time but worked the second. Is the DNS server local or remote? if you do:

nslookup

server 143.166.83.13

att.com

Does that work?

Have you tried using the IP address of a working PC? (disconnect the working PC and use its port on the switch).

Ron

[Dan Burras]

Well, firewalls are turned off on the servers (have two identical units having the exact same problem). And I can't even telnet internally to another system on the same subnet and switch. Heck, I can't even telnet to the switch that I'm physically connected to. And there are no firewalls on the network in between my server and other internal devices.

DNS server is local to my site/network. Doing the nslookup as you requested, the server times out trying to connect to 143.166.83.13 initially but connects on the second attempt. Once the connection is made, I'm able to look up att.com with no problems.

I've tried changing IP addresses and switch ports with known working systems, but that has no effect. The working system continues to work with the cabling, switch port, and settings on the non-working system but the non-working system will not work on the alternative cabling.

[Ron Kinner]

You can try:

netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt

netsh winsock reset catalog

With a reboot after each one. See if that helps.

Can you put in a different NIC card? Uninstall and reinstall the existing one?

Ron

[Jim Mulvey · Accepted solution]

I am having the same issue, was just about to start a new thread. I think I have some information that should help you though: If you are running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2, try turning off Receive Side Scaling on the NIC. See here for more info: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=927695

In my case, I am installing Windows Server 2003 EE x64 Edition. Everything worked fine until I applied SP2.

Like you, I have several DL380 G5s which did not experience the issue. I have no idea why that is.

I'd love for HP to release an updated driver or something to allow us to use the RSS features of the NIC, though.

[Dan Burras]

Jim,

You're my savior. That worked wonderfully!

[Jim Mulvey]

Glad to hear it. It took me 3 days to figure out the problem on my end. I have also found that NOT disabling RSS at the NIC and instead setting the registry key in the Microsoft article above also works. I am leaning toward using the registry approach because I've found some mention that RSS implemented in software may actually be slower than not implementing RSS at all.

I wish HP would provide some help, guidance, or a tech note about this. Since this is an issue that seems to crop up immediately upon a fresh SmartStart installation of the operating system, my hope is that they're going to communicate something about this.