I’m not happy with OpenSuse right now. I had turned an old IBM into a fileserver and it worked perfectly. Recently I received a HP which is a newer system and decided to make that a fileserver with a fresh installation of OpenSUSE. I’m running OpenSuse 12.1 with minimal X window system.
The problem with this system now is that sometimes users can connect to it, and after it restarts, they can’t. I have to login, run Yast, go to the network settings and quit for it to come back online. Its ridiculous. I don’t have to change anything when I log in. I just need login to Yast and quit…I have to do this every time I restart the server and frankly its becoming annoying. I never had this issue with the older IBM. The network settings are correct and perfect.
I thought there may be a problem with the integrated network port and so I bought a PCI card. But that too is the working the same way…
Does anyone know what’s going on???
This wasn’t an issue when I was running Debian on this system. Users were able to connect easily even after a restart. I never had to do a thing. I wanted to manage the system remotely through ssh and I prefer the Yast tool on OpenSUSE for that.
I take it that you have a wired server, not wireless. Next time it happens, without going into Yast and quitting, run these commands as root and paste the terminal sessions back here:
ifconfig
service network status
cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver
Then, without going into Yast and quitting, instead run this command (as root): ifup eth0
and paste the session back here
Then, still without going into Yast and quitting, run these commands again and report the sessions back here:
I gets really frustrating, 'cuz I run the server without any keyboard, mouse or monitor plugged into it at all. I usually use the ssh. But every time this happens, I need to take out my extra monitor, etc… plug it in and you know the rest. All just to log into Yast and quit…
I hope this thread isn’t too old for me to add a reply because I’m experiencing a very similar if not identical issue when my fileserver wakes from sleep mode - but only intermittently. It does seem to happen after longer periods of sleep but I haven’t been able to narrow it down to x number of hours or anything yet,
Anyway, I am using a fresh install of Opensuse 12.1 and the KDE desktop with Samba to serve files to 3 Windows Vista clients. Sometimes after the server has been asleep for a while I wake it up using a magic packet command and it wakes up properly, but is no longer visible on the network and the mapped drive (which is on all the Windows clients) can’t connect. I’ve discovered that all I need to do is open Yast–>Network Services–>Samba Server and click “Ok”, and things start working again. I had assumed it was reinitializing the Samba daemon (or process, or whatever it is…I freely admit that I am a total novice at Linux and have to feel my way through each and every thing I do by trial and error, so please try not to laugh too loud if I say something that’s very silly).
Anyway, if I’m following your suggestions below, you’re checking for network status, then reinitializing the network card and rechecking, right? I don’t think that’s my issue, or the magic packet command would bomb and I’d never wake up the server in the first place, but I’ll give these commands a try the next time it happens and see what I can find out. Thanks.
Since my last post, there has never been an instance that I needed to shut down the server. Its a good thing, meaning that its working full and well and all the users are able to do what they need to do.
As soon as I have a reason to shut down the server, I’ll post the information on the thread.
It actually makes me wonder why is it that the IBM doesn’t face this issue and the HP does…
It might be a problem with NIC drivers and something not working properly when hibernating or going to sleep and waking up.
/sbin/lspci -nnk
will tell You what NIC You’ve got and what driver You’re using. Then You can consult google for potential problems or wait here for some advice from someone who has the same or similar hardware with similar problems.
You should check whether the fault lies in your openSUSE 12.1 client computer that tries to look at your webserver or if the fault lies in your webserver (or maybe in between).
Where is the server situated in relation to your openSUSE 12.1 client computer?
Can you see other sites from your openSUSE 12.1 client computer? (I’m sure that’s a “yes”)
Can you see the server from computers in a location that’s different from the location of your openSUSE 12.1 client computer? (I would thin that’s a “yes” too)
You should check whether the fault lies in your openSUSE 12.1 client computer that tries to look at your webserver or if the fault lies in your webserver (or maybe in between).
Where is the server situated in relation to your openSUSE 12.1 client computer?
Can you see other sites from your openSUSE 12.1 client computer? (I’m sure that’s a “yes”)
Can you see the server from the same location of your openSUSE 12.1 client computer but a different computer? (I would thin that’s a “yes” too)
Can you see the server from computers in a location that’s different from the location of your openSUSE 12.1 client computer? (I would thin that’s a “yes” too)
I have opensuse 12.1 on our server and our server has our website. So, openSuse 12.1 and out website are both on this server.
When I’m logged onto this server, I can pull up a browser and go to localhost and see our site.
But if I pull up a browser, and go to our site through the internet, I get “Unable to connect.”
Yes, I can go to other sites on the internet with no problems.
I’m a little confused, but if I try to go to our site from my laptop, I cannot see our site either.
I can only see the site when I’m logged onto our server (that has opensuse 12.1) and if I go to localhost
… if I try to go to our site from my laptop, I cannot see our site either.
You can see on localhost. You can’t see on domian name like http: //www.yoursite.net. So here are the possibilities:
The name servers on the internet that convert www. yoursite.net to the IP address of your router have stopped working correctly
The port forwarding setup in your router that routes the comms from the interent across to the IP address of your server has stopped working
The path from the router to the web pages is blocked e.g. firewall is blocking the comms that arrive from the router.
Some tests for each of the above three:
For 1 above: Can you ping www. yoursite . net?
For 2 above: put the IP address of the router in your web browser and reset the port forwarding to route TCP port 80 to the fixed IP address of your server (of course, you have a fixed IP, yes?).
For 3 above: Try this from the notebook – put the IP address of the server into the addressing in the browser on the laptop, like
http://192.168.1.6
(or whatever is the correct IP). Can you see the site that way from the laptop?
Yes, I just pinged to it from my home computer. I seems fine with pinging.
When I first started working here, someone hand wrote IP addresses on a piece of paper and taped them to the top of each server3. I don’t know where these address came from. i don’t think my boss knows is they are fixed.
I notice in Yast>network devices>network configuration dhcp is selected instead of static
But anyway, I’ll put the IP address of the router in my web browser and reset the port forwarding. I’ll let you know how that goes.
I believe my laptop uses the free wifi provided by our building. Even when it was up and working, I could not see our site on laptop when I was I was using their wifi. In the past, I could see our website from my laptop when I was at.
Free wifi and a disabled firewall, how interesting!
Getting back to the problem:
You should give the server a fixed IP and make the router forward comms for port 80 to that IP.
Fixed IP is set in yast. At the same time set the gateway IP in yast, and set the name servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 will do). Then goto the router in your web browser and point it to the IP that you set for the server.
Make sure you choose an IP for the server that (a) lies within the subnet of your LAN and that (b) lies outside the IP range used by the DHCP server in the router.
You can see what IP the web server is getting from the DHCP server with this command: su -c ifconfig
Hey Swerdna. Thanks for all your help. I finally got it working. What you wrote yesterday got me looking at other things that could be wrong. I’ll explain how I fixed it so if someone else has this exact problem, they can fix it quick.
When I started working here, I found the IP address taped to this Linux server. I upgraded server from openSUSE 11.1 to 12.1. That could have changed some of the settings. It defaulted to DHCP under network settings. I thought that was the original setting, so I left it alone. Basically, under Network Card Setup, I switched it from “Dynamic Address” to “Statically assigned IP Address.”
Instructions for other noobies:
go into Yast>Network Devices>Network Settings
Make sure you are in the Overview tab
click: edit
Then, :
click Statically assigned IP Address
type in specific IP Address for this server
for Subnet Mask, type in: /24
for Hostname, type in: www(dot)domainname(dot)com
click: next
click the tab that says: Hostname/DNS
then,
type in: hostname
type in: domain name
click: Assign Hostname to Loopback IP
click the tab Routing
For Default IPv4 Gateway, type in your router’s IP Address
Hit ok
Restart server
Thanks Swerdna. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot.
