Network Issues OpenSUSE 11.3

I’m having a very strange problem. I installed OpenSuSE 11.3. The only “extra” package I put in after the install was VirtualBox-ose. The firewall is disabled. I gave the machine a static IP address. I can get to the Internet from the machine.

I enabled sshd to start on boot with “chkconfig sshd on” and also verified the service is running on the machine. I can ssh user@localhost from the machine as well.

When I try to connect to SSH from another machine, I get a connection refused. I verify that the firewall is down. I also try to get to VNC – same problem: Connection refused. I ping the machine for fun. If I try to SSH again, it sometimes gives me a logon?

I would check the server logs for the connection refused, but I wouldn’t know where to look. I started in /var/log/messages, but nothing seemed to jump out there. I also find it strange because I can RDP to a windows guest running under VirtualBox. The Windows guest uses Bridged Network and DHCP.

I also find it interesting that I sometimes type a “ping google.com” from the 11.3 box and it will just hang - no output. Then I open firefox and get to the internet. All of a sudden, ping starts to give output.

Could this be a neetwork card issue? A configuration issue? I don’t know where to start.

Well I kinda feel dumb… The static IP I set up, was already in use. This explains why sometimes I was able to get to the machine and others, I could not. Considering the small number of machines on the network, I couldn’t imagine anybody would also pick 192.168.1.238

I’m only posting my folly in hopes that it helps somebody else. Even if it is just to prove Murphy’s Law…