wlan stops working when using nfs/ssh/smb

brewer · 11-09-2003, 09:07 AM

I have a sony 2.7 GHz and an athlon 1333 MHz, both have a netgear wifi card with a prism 2.5 chipset, running on the default orinoco_pci driver (tried linux-wlan but it didn't want to work for some reason). In addition one blueberry iBook with an airport. They are set up as an Ad-Hoc network, and it works for internet just fine. I wanted to transfer a lot of files from the AMD based pc to the newer intel one, so I told it to share /home with 192.168.0.1 (the sony) over nfs. Then I mount the share from the newer pc, so far so good, Then it copies about two files, and stops. After that unless I restart the other computer it seems to be gone from the network for good. I can't ping it, it just says "no route to host". if I try it the other way around the same thing happens with the other computer. It also happens occasionally if I ssh -X desktop and launch some X app like eagle. Seems to happen any time a lot of data has to be sent in other words, except that it doesn't happen when I download files from the internet. Weird huh? I tried it with smb too by the way, no luck there either.

Please help.

-Breandan

hw-tph · 11-09-2003, 09:45 AM

Open a terminal on the computer that dies when transferring files, and type tail -f /var/log/syslog. You may have to be root to do this. Then, when the syslog is being tailed in a terminal so you can keep an eye on it, do whatever it is you do when the network dies. There will probably be error messages in the syslog, and they are often helpful in determining the source of the problem.

Håkan

brewer · 11-09-2003, 10:45 AM

I can't try what you said yet, since I only have on monitor at the moment. Is there a way I can look at the syslog afterwards?

hw-tph · 11-09-2003, 11:13 AM

Yes, by all means. If you run in text-mode only you can press Alt+F2 or F3 (any F key up to F6) to get another login screen. Login on that screen and type the tail command, then you can Alt+F1 to get back to the original and switch back and forth.

Håkan

brewer · 11-09-2003, 01:41 PM

not sure if this will help but last time it happened, I went to restart and the whole screen was full of the error message "eth1: error -110 writing Tx descriptor to BAP" and I had to resort to the power button to get it to restart.