[comp.unix.i386] Ethernet panics machines

jimmy@icjapan.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) (08/04/90)

In our San Diego office, we are trying for the first time to network
some machines together and not having much luck.

Until we actually hook up the Ethernet cable between machines,
everything is fine.  And even after the cable is attached we can ping 
from a machine to itself for example.

But once we try to rlogin or ping, the target machine 'panic's.
One of the machines will panic without even trying to send it anything
across the cable.

Does this sound like a problem with the cable, or is there some aspect
of configuration we might be missing?  I am told they have checked for
interrupt conflicts.

The machine is a AT&T 6386E (Olivetti M380/XP-5) running Interactive
2.0.2 with their TCP/IP v1.2 and a WD EtherCard Plus.  The machines
run fine in all other respects.  They are running voice mail-type
applications using Dialogic's v1.0 Unix Voice Driver with six Dialogic
D/40B cards.

Thanks for any help.
--
Jim Gottlieb 					Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan
    <jimmy@pic.ucla.edu> or <jimmy@denwa.info.com> or <attmail!denwa!jimmy>
Fax: +81 3 237 5867				    Voice Mail: +81 3 222 8429

jackv@turnkey.tcc.com (Jack F. Vogel) (08/06/90)

In article <374@icjapan.uucp> Jim Gottlieb <jimmy@denwa.info.com> writes:
>
>Until we actually hook up the Ethernet cable between machines,
>everything is fine.  And even after the cable is attached we can ping 
>from a machine to itself for example.
 
Gee, you mean you actually want to USE the network :-} :-}.

>But once we try to rlogin or ping, the target machine 'panic's.
>One of the machines will panic without even trying to send it anything
>across the cable.
 
Don't have an immediate answer for you, but would suggest you take a
dump (It does find one after rebooting right?), then load the dump and
use crash to find out what's going on. Are the machines panic'ing all
running ISC, also does the panic seem independent of the interface (i.e.,
are they all running the same type ethernet card or does it vary) ?
These are just a couple of questions that come to mind. Since ISC's TCP
package is being used fairly extensively I would look towards hardware
first. Good Luck!

Disclaimer: I don't speak for LCC or IBM, blue suits give me a rash :-}.

-- 
Jack F. Vogel			jackv@locus.com
AIX370 Technical Support	       - or -
Locus Computing Corp.		jackv@turnkey.TCC.COM

dag@fciva.FRANKLIN.COM (Daniel A. Graifer) (08/06/90)

I'm not familier with ISC's TCP/IP implementation, but on our Prime/AT&T/
Spyder, we had problems with panics under heavy ethernet loads until we
bumped up the NBLKxx, NSTREAM, and NQUEUE kernal config parameters.  If
your tcp/ip is STREAMS based (which I assume it is), get a dump, and use
crash to look at an strstat.

Good luck
Dan
-- 
Daniel A. Graifer			Franklin Mortgage Capital Corporation
uunet!dag@fmccva.franklin.com		7900 Westpark Drive, Suite A130
(703)448-3300				McLean, VA  22102