I hate to admit it

Story: Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn — Cool, Fresh and… UnstableTotal Replies: 16
Author Content
tuxchick

Jun 11, 2007
9:32 PM EDT
But Kubuntu feisty is pretty darned nice. Fonts are beautiful; the best of any Linux ever. Stability is fine, except firefox is its usual annoying unreliable self. But for a wonder it doesn't take down my whole system like it did on previous releases. It's noticeably faster than Fedora 6 on the same machine.

It has the some of the same dumb crap as older buntus- printers are not shared by default, Avahi runs by default even though there is not one single supported zeroconf device in all of Linux, bluetooth is on by default, and a few other nits. But overall it is quite nice and usable. I replaced a Real Debian Etch installation with it, because no matter what I did fonts on Etch were awful. Which was weird, because I have a number of Etch installations with no font problems. Interestingly, Etch had recently replaced Kubuntu, and the darned thing ate all the dotfiles in my homedir. Feisty did not do that, but left everything untouched like it's supposed to.
dinotrac

Jun 12, 2007
1:24 AM EDT
tc --

Off-topic here, but a little bit of wizard insight would be much appreciated.

My problem is this:

I have a server sitting on a T1 that intermittently ceases to respond to the outside world. It is hooked to a Cisco router owned and maintained by the folks from whom the T1 is leased.

During those non-responsive times, I know the box is alive and well, because I can go to another machine attached to the same Cisco router and ssh into it. From there, I can ping the world, ssh out to a server out in California, etc.

Traceroutes show timeouts three hops up from my server when things are bad, but I am not proficient at divining what traceroute is telling me. When things are good, well -- everything is happy.

The network guy got onto the router, pinged my box, and pronounced that all is well. That test, of course, was meaningless because we already knew that the box was live to the router because we can go through the router from another box that is hooked to it.

I don't see any way that my box can be the problem given that I can still get through to it from another box on the router and through the same network interface (cables, etc). I also don't see how any routing table issues could be at fault as routing tables are not intermittent.

Seems like a sick router to me, but we are in finger-pointing time, and I wonder if there is something else I can do on my box to nail the issue enough so that we can scream at the provider and demand some competent support (ie -- I really don't want to do that unless I can be pretty sure that I am being competent on my end).

Thanks.



jdixon

Jun 12, 2007
6:40 AM EDT
Dino:

Not TC, but...

Print out the working traceroute.

Print out the bad traceroute the next time it goes boink.

Determine the IP address/name of the device which is not working.

Give all of the above to your network folks. Hopefully they're competent to sort things out. I agree that it sounds like a sick router. Three hops out could be an outbound router at your network provider (hop 1 - the Cisco, hop 2 - your gateway router, hop 3 - their outbound router).
dinotrac

Jun 12, 2007
6:45 AM EDT
>Give all of the above to your network folks.

Sadly, I did that.

Their response was to ping my box from their router and proclaim that there was no problem.

Sigh. I guess they missed the part about being able to get to the box from another machine connected to the same router.

Thanks, though. Beginning to sound like I'm not a total nincompeep.
jdixon

Jun 12, 2007
8:30 AM EDT
> Sadly, I did that.

OK. In that case, you'll probably need to tackle it from the other end. Get someone to perform a working traceroute and a non-working traceroute to your server. Then point out to them that the fact that it works if you're past the bad point doesn't mean that folks from outside that point can get it. Maybe they'll listen then. If not, you may need to start looking for a provider who has a clue. :(
dinotrac

Jun 12, 2007
8:50 AM EDT
>If not, you may need to start looking for a provider who has a clue. :(

Thanks.
Aladdin_Sane

Jun 12, 2007
9:47 AM EDT
I think that since you have a KG (Known Good) system, and one that needs T/S (Troubleshooting) that you can provide the proof the provider needs to show that a ping is inadequate to T/S the problem.

I would make printouts of all config files that are required for TCP/IP networking, and compare them side by side. If there are differences, set the non-good server to the KG servers settings (where appropriate) and try again.

If still no go, then the provider can be shown the evidence that it is on their side.

The big example of what config files to check that comes to mind is resolv.conf. If that is the method in use for finding DNS servers, then both servers should have the same settings.

Likewise with other common networking config files.

The goal is written proof that all settings are identical, so that the provider is convinced it is not on your side. In the process, you may discover the answer.

Cisco routers and switches are generally managed, so a ping is not enough from the providers side to prove they are not having the problem. I would expect them to at least reboot the switch/router since these are run out of firmware which can get confused from time to time.
dinotrac

Jun 12, 2007
9:53 AM EDT
A_S -

Thanks. I think that's a good suggestion...comparing the settings on the one that operates properly with the one that seems not to.
tuxchick

Jun 12, 2007
3:18 PM EDT
What everyone said. Your "tech" support is being lame.
Aladdin_Sane

Jun 12, 2007
4:14 PM EDT
Today's fortune:

handshaking protocol, n: A process employed by hostile hardware devices to initiate a terse but civil dialog, which, in turn, is characterized by occasional misunderstanding, sulking, and name-calling.
rijelkentaurus

Jun 12, 2007
4:14 PM EDT
Quoting: But Kubuntu feisty is pretty darned nice. Fonts are beautiful; the best of any Linux ever. Stability is fine,


Back to the topic, I have setup a Linux PC for my lady's nephew, and I used Kubuntu Feisty. It really is all that and a bag of chips, it looks good, it's fast, it's stable and it has 14 billion programs in the repos. They've done a great job on this one. Haven't tried straight Ubuntu in this flavor, but I'm going to install Xubunu Feisty in a VM on my laptop (running PCLOS2007 as the base OS) to have it handy for the multitude of network tools available in the repos.
bigg

Jun 12, 2007
4:47 PM EDT
> Fonts are beautiful; the best of any Linux ever.

Are they the same as Ubuntu? I very much prefer the default fonts in Fedora over Ubuntu. (I realize that there is a wide variety of opinion regarding fonts - some Linux users actually like the MS fonts, whereas I think they're so ugly they should be illegal.)
dinotrac

Jun 12, 2007
4:50 PM EDT
> Haven't tried straight Ubuntu in this flavor,

I have a straight Ubuntu box, and share an Ubuntu server with my partner. T'ain't half bad, but methinks I need to switch it out for kubuntu. I just can't seem to warm up to GNOME not matter how hard I try. I have to upgrade my wife's Suse box, so I will probably just turn it to kubuntu. If that goes well...my dekstop my join the 'us and ahs.
dthacker

Jun 12, 2007
6:59 PM EDT
I put Kubuntu Dapper on an old PIII laptop and ran it for 6 months. Flawless. I put Kubuntu Fiesty on Dell P4 laptop and ran it for a month. It's great with a few minor nits. (wireless drivers, we won't go there right now....) Based on those two, I converted my workstation. It's much faster than the SuSE 9.3 it replaced and very easy to look at all day long. No stability issues.

Dave
rijelkentaurus

Jun 12, 2007
7:56 PM EDT
Quoting: (wireless drivers, we won't go there right now....)


That's a Dell issue, I would imagine. I have a TrendNet wireless PCI card in the Kubuntu box, with an Atheros chipset, and it picked it up on reboot without an issue, and I configured a WPA2 connection as easy as 1-2-3. $30 card.

Quoting: I just can't seem to warm up to GNOME not matter how hard I try


Amen. I can only use GNOME (don't know why) on Red Hat proper (or CentOS), but I still normally put KDE on. I can configure KDE so much easier and tweak it to be mine.
jdixon

Jun 13, 2007
5:56 AM EDT
> Haven't tried straight Ubuntu in this flavor...

I've got a VMware instance of Ubuntu 6.06 on my work machine for showing off to folks. I don't use it for much except to answer the occasional question. Like some others, I seem to prefer Xfce or KDE to Gnome, but it otherwise seems stable and functional.
alc

Jun 13, 2007
11:12 AM EDT
Has anyone tried plugging in a USB hard drive. Thumb drives work fine. For some reason Hard drives don't want to work.Hit or miss it seems.A quick look in the forums seems to indicate I wasn't the only one having this problem. Check system settings/ disk and filesystem when it's (usb hdd) plugged in and it shows the hdd as proc,which doesn't want to open like a thumbdrive.This didn't happen with Dapper,only with feisty.

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