Topic: SME Internet access crashes

[ssn]

hi,
i reported this to the bug tracker, but it was closed. after a bit of using the smeserver as internet gateway, the internet access breaks down.
the network card is onboard (old abit nforce2 board), i dont understand the logfile, but it seems to tell me exactly what is going wrong:
http://pastebin.com/f5a10e24d
is it a hardware failure?
thx for your help

[zatnikatel]

does look like a hardware problem how long does it run before it dies

[ssn]

it crashes once or twice a day. no pattern there.

[zatnikatel]

can you tell me your lay out IE Internet router computer on network any other servers looking at your log files you use pppoe with the sme server
just a rough run down on your setup and will go from there if it only does it once or twice a day it may not be hardware

[ssn]

im using the sme machine as a router for pppoe (gateway + server). also, dyndns is enabled and i access the ibays via ftp (when i am elsewhere), afp and samba. dhcp is enabled for lan, there are no other servers present. on the lan interface, is a netgear switch (and some other noname switch) with a couple of macs and pcs (and one or two printers).
it worked quite well for a long time.
what do you mean by "lay out IE Internet router computer"?

[zatnikatel]

Sorry my mistake meant to say layout
if it is a server and gate way you have 2 network cards the onboard is a nvida nforce 2 chip set by the sounds of it it is the onboard one is stuffed i have come across this before had a friend with a nforce 2 chipset and the card would play up when we were lan gaming reboot fixed it for a while i would replace it also check the cables as well if you have not done that already realtek chipset network cards are fine i have then in my SME server never given any problems make sure you disable the onboard network card in the bios first then add the network card also what type of DSL modem do you have is it in bridge mode so that SME does the PPPOE or it it one of those modems that does not have PPPOE inbuilt try this as well
on the SME server stop the pppoe service restart the modem then restart pppoe on the SME server don't reboot and if it starts ok and the internet is fine it maybe the modem but only do this when the connection dies it seems strange that it takes a while to die
does the lan part go down on the server or just the internet side IE does not mean internet explorer it is another quick way of saying what is all your lay out
I live in Australia i don't think that is used in other countries as much as out here
i am very methodical when it comes to problems i don't replace things until i am sure it is the problem
 

[ssn]

hi,
on the the lan side: that is a cheap realtek card. when the internet goes down, the server is still perfectly fine.
i replaced the modem, that made no difference. i tried to restart the services, but i didnt know which ones.

[zatnikatel]

if down ppp0 ifup ppp0 will stop and start the service
is the modem in bridge mode
also have you done an update on the server there are some bugs with some 2.6 kernels with some network cards as well
try this for a fix may help to see if it is a kernel problem
enambled wake-on lan in the bios
and also put this into the grub command line pci=noacpi this will tell use if it is a kernel problem

[ssn]

"enambled wake-on lan in the bios"?
i tried another card, same problem...
what does pci=noacpi?

[zatnikatel]

it turns off power managerment so nothing goes in to sleep mode
also when you tried another nic did you dissable the onboard in the bios
do you use 2 nic's in the server seeing that it is in gateway mode it should have 2

[zatnikatel]

does the lan side of sme go down at all
there is one other thing to try instead of sme doing the pppoe let the modem do it and port forward smtp port 110 pop3 port 25 to the sme server and turn of dhcp on the sme server let the modem router do it put the sme server in to server only mode
if it is only the internet side of SME that dies it sound very strange have you talked to your ISP about it as well they may have changed something as some ISP only use PPPOA and PPPOE works but is slower also PPPOA is faster
also do you know how to use tcpdump or wireshark to check network they could be a flood of information going to the network card causeing it to die
wireshark has a GUI you could use it on a windows box to check but you need to use a hub not a switch a switch will not give you the right info as you can not buy hub anymore
i support a lot of SME server have never had this problem

[ssn]

there is no router between the internet and the sme, it does pppoe itself.

[zatnikatel]

but you have a adsl modem what type is it and model most modems are routers as well these days
i have much the same setup but i am useing centos 5 at the moment i wanted to setup an email server from scratch i have my modem set to bridge mode as the one my ISP gave me does not have port forwading in it but i have a lot of clients useing SME server out here in australia SME is good all email is setup there is much work setting up an email server from scratch
but back to your problem it just seems strange the linux PPPOE client is robust and does not give this problem as you can expect sending stuff over via a message board is trial and error
you have not answered what i ask in the last post

[zatnikatel]

have you had any luck as let with the internet problem
can you get this info for me in the shell type route -v
the modem needs to be in the coorect "bridged" mode there are a couple of different ones looking at the error you are having could be the ISP has changed something on how they do PPPOE or PPPOA

don't know if this will help in etc/ppp
have a look at this file pppoe-server-options
# PPP options for the PPPoE server
# LIC: GPL
require-pap
login
lcp-echo-interval 10
lcp-echo-failure 2 remark out this line then restart ppp0 this is a work around if it works then it looks like an ISP problem this does fix problem with some ISP

i am like i dog with a bone i don't give up until it is fixed
what country do you live in it is more and more looking like an ISP problem