Please Help - 0810 keeps dropping my internet connection

[charlie1953]

Hi and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this amazing project.

I have been running a 710 hybrid for over a year now - it has proved to be a totally reliable gateway, DHCP server and firewall as well as a media server for all the PCs around the house.

A few weeks ago I decided to install the beta 810. Everything appeared to go smoothly - I read everything I could on the forums and wiki and followed all the instructions and it appeared to pay-off.

After a few hours however, all the PCs in the house lost internet connectivity. After many frustrating days I have determined that the gateway seems to stop working after a certain amount of traffic has passed. If traffic is low it will last up to 4 or 5 hours but if I download large files or watch movies online then it will crap out sooner.

All my hardware is exactly the same as before in my very stable 710 system.

This output from ifconfig shows my network card setup:

Code: [Select]

charlie@dcerouter:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:31:8a:2f:3b
          inet addr:192.168.80.1  Bcast:192.168.80.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::217:31ff:fe8a:2f3b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:15102 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:108818 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:3472726 (3.4 MB)  TX bytes:16448632 (16.4 MB)
          Interrupt:18

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:05:1c:1b:35:14
          inet addr:192.168.1.5  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::205:1cff:fe1b:3514/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:40198 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:38378 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:42401014 (42.4 MB)  TX bytes:4414124 (4.4 MB)
          Interrupt:17 Base address:0xb400

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:45840 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:45840 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:5720744 (5.7 MB)  TX bytes:5720744 (5.7 MB)

charlie@dcerouter:~$
I have noticed a repeating problem in the syslog viewer that seems to indicate one of the pcs on the network may be doing something wierd:

Code: [Select]

2009-11-29 23:33:13 dcerouter named[5498] client 192.168.80.130#59870: RFC 1918 response from Internet for 130.80.168.192.in-addr.arpa
2009-11-29 23:33:46 dcerouter named[5498] client 192.168.80.130#58365: RFC 1918 response from Internet for 130.80.168.192.in-addr.arpa
2009-11-29 23:34:15 dcerouter named[5498] client 192.168.80.130#36076: RFC 1918 response from Internet for 130.80.168.192.in-addr.arpa[/tt]
Am I on the right track here? If so, how can I determine what is causing this? Also, why did it all work fine with 710 and when I eliminate LMCE 810 and use my adsl router as a gateway?

Any assistance or ideas would be much appreciated.

many thanks
Charlie.

[PeteK]

Charlie--

I saw a (possibly) similar problem with my setup wen running earlier builds of LMCE.  In that case, the internal ethernet adapter on the server stopped letting traffic through, even though ifconfig and ethtool showed a working adapter. I couldn't even ping the hybrid core from the internal network This only happened when I had MDs on the internal network.  If I shut those down, I never saw this problem. Nothing else (switches, cabling, etc) seemed to affect the issue.  It seems to have disappeared with 0810.  Do you see this issue if  you have no MDs on the system (i.e. standard windows or linux PCs)?

[Bumaster108]

Charlie,
I noticed your external network card was eth1.  I'm not sure if this still matters, but the 810 beta page on the wiki says that the external card needed to be eth0.  I believe there is a button in the web admin site to swap these - don't forget to swap your network cables too.

Chris

[charlie1953]

Pete thanks for the reply. I have not configured any MDs yet - just the Hybrid machine itself. I have two linux (ubuntu) and one vista and an old Tivo. I have not loaded any media - I am just trying to get a stable network before I continue.
Chris - I have seen reference to the fact that you have to have eth0 as the external facing card but I have never seen a reason given for this so I figured that since my installation works (kind of) perhaps that was just necessary for some hardware configurations. I will swap them around tonight and see if it helps but it would be good to get confirmation that this is what is causing my problem.
cheers, Charlie

[charlie1953]

I have swapped the eth0 and eth1 around using the button on the network settings page of the web admin. Also swapped the cables around. ifconfig confirms that I now have eth0 on the outside as per the instructions.

I will have to wait to see if this solves the problem. However, I am still getting those named[5498] errors in the syslog on my LMCE hybrid.
Also - I have just noticed that the Internet address that seems to be giving the problem is a mirror image of the Ubuntu machine's address.
ie 192.168.80.130 seems to be trying to access 130.80.168.192

This error is happening about every second when I am generating any traffic.

Are there any clues in this?

thanks anyone,
Charlie

[UNi]

Those named / bind errors happened to me as well (on two different distros) and they have to do with leaking private address information to the Internet. 

"If the IN-ADDR.ARPA name covered refers to a internal address space you are
using then you have failed to follow RFC 1918 usage rules and are leaking
queries to the Internet. You should establish your own zones for these
addresses to prevent you querying the Internet's name servers for these
addresses. Please see http://as112.net/ for details of the problems you are
causing and the counter measures that have had to be deployed."

Check here for the fix = http://public.as112.net/

These errors are not causing your overall problem...

-UNi

[charlie1953]

Update:

No luck with my network dropping problem or my IN-ADDR.ARPA issue but I saw a write error on the swap drive - flashed past as I watched the syslog while the ubuntu PC was watching a movie online - ie generating traffic through the gateway.

I have assumed this is my problem so have bought a new 500G disk and downloaded the new beta2 iso and am starting again.
Will post any interesting experiences in a new thread.

Thanks to all who tried to help....