syslog restarts and other wierdness

[James Dooley]

At Thursday, 19 October 2000, you wrote:

>Yesterday we got called out for problems at one of the elementary
>schools and was surprised to find that the server was the source of at
>least part of the problems.  The complaint was that server resources
>couldn't be accessed - and turned out to be true.
>
>The server is a file & printer server for win3x and win9x clients using
>Samba.  It also handles dhcp services for the network with ISC's dhcp
>server.  OS is Mandrake 7.1.
>
>I checked /var/log/messages and found the syslog was restarting itself
>every 15 seconds or so and had been for the last three days.  Couldn't
>figure out why.  There wasn't anything else in the logs that stuck 
me as
>significant to the current trouble.
>
>We started working with the complaint that the classes were unable to
>access resources and ended up rebooting the server (restarting various
>services - network, smb - didn't help).  This seemed to correct access
>at first but then we started getting dhcp address expirations on 
all the
>clients.  I found that the box refused to start the dhcp server daemon
>with the error that it couldn't bind to the IP address because it was
>already in use.  There is and was nothing else on the same IP address 
as
>the server but the only way I found to resolve that problem was to put
>the server on a different IP address.  That's a wierd one I've never
>seen before.
>
>Now this morning I'm starting to get more complaints that the access
>problem has returned to some degree.  Only a few computers in the 
school
>can access one of the important programs.
>
>Though I haven't been to the server console yet today, I have telnet'd
>in but didn't really find much.  All the important services appear 
to be
>up and there aren't any unusual messages in the logs.  Syslog is not
>restarting like it was when we were there yesterday.
>
>I'm wondering about record locking problems or something.  The main app
>they're having trouble with is Accelerated Reader.  It was previously 
on
>a Novell server that we have replaced with this mandrake server.  We
>saved the files from the old server and ftp'd them to the new server. 
>The novell server had no problems sharing this data but the error
>appears that it may be one of access to either the data or temp
>directories both of which have to be write enabled for updates.  At
>least two computers are using this program with no trouble giving the
>students tests and updating records but most everybody else is locked
>out.  The error (as I recall) is something to the effect of "error
>opening files" which of course doesn't give much to go on.
>
>Any idea what's happening here or where I can look for clues?
>
>-- 
Did you change the ip's on each of the computers that connect to 
that server...
If the computers connected to ip x and you changed that ip to y they 
would try to connect to ip x until told other wise.
If you did change them or if they use a dns I dont know what to say.

>Mike Rambo
>mrambo@lsd.k12.mi.us
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>



Thanks
James Dooley
CEO
Dooley3D
james@Dooley3D.com