[ale] Please help: BellSouth ADSL hangs with sendmail andup2date

[James P. Kinney III]

Bellsouth can be a pain when trying to diagnose problems. 

1. Make sure you are running up2date from command line. So you need to
use:

up2date -v --nox

The -v will give more verbose output. --nox will run CLI only.

Read the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/* files. They tell info about which servers
you are using. Up2date uses http (port 80) protocols.

You may be just unlucky and have a flaky connection (Bellsouth) that is
loosing the "connection busy. try later" reply to your up2date
connection request.

Or you may have a broken up2date binary. Download and rpm -Uvh from the
GaTech site. Be sure to get up2date from the redhat/linux/update area. 

If that croaks, it's time for some more detailed info. Put a hub between
the modem and ethernet card on your connection box. Put a second box on
the hub. Don't use a switch. Use tcpdump and related friends to grab the
traffic when you run up2date. Post what the tcpdump shows. Don't bother
to try and ping to the up2date servers you find in
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date, ping is blocked on those servers.

On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 18:27, Chuck Mattern wrote:
> OK folks I'm back from testing all of the suggestions offered earlier in the
> thread and still stumped.  I feel strongly that my problem is related to Bell
> South and not my configuration, of course omniscience is not among my
> characteristics and finding out that I am wrong but having a solution would be
> great.  And of course getting any assistance from BellSouth with Linux box on
> my end will be difficult at best.
> 
> To recap, the scenario is that I am attempting to switch from AT&T Broadband 
> to BellSouth DSL.  I have both connections up in tandem but this is getting 
> expensive for a poor sysadmin.  Both connections work very well EXCEPT that 
> both up2date and sendmail connections on the BellSouth link will establish and 
> then hang.  There are copious screen scrapes and diagnostic outputs in the 
> first message of this thread which I can repost if needed.
> 
> At this point I have tried setting up the following configs on the BellSouth 
> side:
> 
> RedHat 6.2 with and without an ipchains firewall.
> RedHat 7.3 with and without an iptables firewall.
> IPCop 0.1.1p6, manually updated to the latest Roaring Penguin 
> PPPoE
> 
> All of these have the same symptom, up2date and sendmail outbound connections
> will establish and then hang from any machine inside the network (yes I have
> been modifying my sendmail.cf to match the targeted provider and restarting
> sendmail to read in the altered config).  up2date run on the RedHat firewall
> boxes themselves will hang.  When I try up2date with the firewall directives
> down down it still hangs.  If I set the default route of the BellSouth firewall
> to point through the AT&T firewall and re-issue the up2date it runs flawlessly.
> 
> On the AT&T side I had an OBSD firewall but to better trouble shoot this I did 
> a matching install of IPCop 0.1.1p6 with identical configs (which is still 
> running and has been flawlessly for a week now) problems stay with the 
> BellSouth side.  Something is up with either the DSL modem (Alcatel Speed 
> Touch Home) or the service.  
> 
> I need help in figuring out what it might be so I can present my case to
> BellSouth.  What can/should I look for in ethereal or tcpdump?  Has anyone else
> seen anything like this with BS or any other DSL provider?  Are there any Linux
> friendly DSL providers who would work with me if I decide to switch?  Any
> feedback would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Regards,
> Chuck
> 
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> |Chuck Mattern	        | "People often find it easier to be a result |
> |camattern at acm.org      | of the past than a cause of the future."    |
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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