I have 2 Linux servers. One is having RH 8.0 and another one with RH 9.0. The first machine is having 2 ethernet card and eth1 is connected to internet via cable modem. IP address of eth0 is 192.168.1.1 and other machine's IP is 192.168.1.2. The first machine is also loaded with squid for proxy. All clients PCs in local network is accessing 192.168.1.1 for internet access.

The other Linux machine (192.168.1.2) is used for file server (samba), mail server (sendmail), intranet (apache) and all clients login to this machine for their mails and file access.

I have also set gateway on 192.168.1.2 as follows:

route add -net default gw 192.168.1.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 1

Also mentioned the nameserver ip address on /etc/resolv.conf

Everything is working fine when the cable line is up. Whenever the cable modem is off or the connectivity to internet is absent on gateway machine (192.168.1.1) clients are unable to login to 192.168.1.2 machine. This happens when any client machine try to login else whoever has logged in have no problem, they can still work with their shareable files or folders. Cable lines goes down 2-3 times a day that creats a lot of problem to us.

Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance. Joson

Can you post your routing table at both points, when it does work and when it doesn't work:
route -n

Does it work if you try to connect with the ip address rather than the server name?

Dear David-ross,

Thank you for your prompt response:


route -n result from 192.168.1.2 is as follows:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flag Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.55.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 1 0 0 eth0

In the other machine (192.168.1.1) :

203.194.96.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.128 U 0 0 0 eth1
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 203.194.196.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1

And the status is same always.

Additional Information: When my cable line is up everything works fine. The user login problem happens only when cabe line is down. Similarly, the moment the line come up, it again starts working as normal. Also during the time when the cabe modem is down, the people who have already logged into the system have no problem, they can still work. Problem happens to the users who try to login to the server (192.168.1.2) when the cable modem is down. Hope I have clarified.

Regards,

Joson

Hi,

Not tried. Users are trying to login thru samba login where we are using workgroup name for access. Therefore, I don't know whether I can try this option. Any how I shall try and come back to u. Other-wise is there any clue why this is happening?

My doubt is when the default gatway is down, why login to the server is not allowed. Will it be a setting problem? Basically what I want is to set my server to have that default gateway setting but even when the gateway is not on, local people should be able to login to the server.

May be someone can help me ????

Joson

My only assumption was some sort of name resolution hence why I suggested using the IP.

Can you ping the server when the gateway is down?

Is there any record of a conection attempt in the samba logs? You may want to increase the logging level.

Hi,

Sorry for the delay. I was busy on some other issues.

To reply to your query - I can ping to the server when the gateway is down. And I tried connecting thru IP address, but it was not working. I dont think the samba config is the problem as our clients cannot download their e-mails also from the server during the time when gateway is down.
Any clue?

What do your clients use as the name of the e-mail server? If iy is a DNS entry then try it with the IP address.

What about the log I mentioned before?