My place of work has a Linux box that acts as an email/internet server for all of our machines. Lately, users cannot connect to the Internet or to their email. I have rebooted the machine twice, and after that, it seems to work fine, however I wish to find a more effective way of fixing this. I have very little experience with Linux, so please be specific.

Is this machine acting as a firewall too? Does it get its ip from DHCP or is it static?


Next time you have trouble see if that machine can ping anything. Dump a bunch of network junk to a file

((netstat -rn; netstat -pan; ifconfig; route -n; iptables -Ln; iptables -t nat -Ln 2>&1) > /tmp/file1;

Then run restart the network

/etc/init.d/network restart;

Redump the network junk.
((netstat -rn; netstat -pan; ifconfig; route -n; iptables -Ln; iptables -t nat -Ln 2>&1) > /tmp/file2;

The network should now work. Then post the output of the two files and we will try to see what is happening. I think you are lossing you ip, but I can't be sure. We shall see.

lnmp, when was the last time you went to the doctor and said "it hurts when i do this" and nothign else? ever tried asking a mechanic to fix your car and only said "it won't go fast"?

We can not even slightly begin to help you unless you provide some actual information.

What distro
what machine spec
what web server
what mail server
what startup mesages
what error messages
what do users see

we're not psychic....

Quoting another response does not help us determine the problem in anyway whatsoever.