Network problems

[Lucio M Nicolosi]

On Sat, Dec 25, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Bill Stanley <bstanle at wowway.com> wrote:
>>
>
> This is a real interesting (puzzling) problem!  I can send and receive
> pings from one machine but not the other.  Also, I installed samba and I
> looked at the samba logs of both computers.
>
> 1. It seems that there is **SOME** communications happening but not
> enough to make a connection.   Although I didn't give the computer name
> of the other computer to either computer, I can see in the logs the name
> of the other computer.  This wouldn't happen if there was no
> communications.
>
> 2. The computer that accepts and gives pings tries to open samba file
> sharing but gets nothing back.  It then gives an error message that it
> hasn't received a share list from the other computer.  On both computers
> I am sharing the documents directory.  Does one computer have to be
> running server software or are equal peers acceptable?
>
> 3.  On the sharing program (shares-admin) I can't get any other opition
> other than Unix network nfs when I investigate the properties of the
> documents folder.  Maybe this is the problem?  By the way, the
> shares-admin program is really a poor program.  Is there a better one
> out there.  Either that or what file needs to be manually edited?
>
> 4. I now wonder if the ping problem is really the cause of the network
> problems.  Maybe they are two separate but related problems.
>
> I know that this might be too much information but in my experience
> sometimes a minor detail gets us on the right track.  Thanks for the
> help even if the problem isn't yet solved.

Bill,

Sometimes Samba can perform weirdly. The network is there, but only
reachable if you use the IPs of the connections, like
smb//:192.168.0.99/ - otherwise you receive a "Unable to mount
location" message.

I think you should stick to the ping stuff that seems to point the
underlying problem.

Check the ping man page at:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/man8/ping.8.html for
useful parameters and information on errors.

Also consider the possibility of hardware fault, either cable or lan
board (circuit). If you have one available, try to install an extra
lan board on the faulty unit to check if you still face the same
condition.

Regards,

Lucio

-- 
L M Nicolosi, Eng.
Ubuntu AMD64
GNU-Linux Regist. User #481505 - http://counter.li.org/