[KLUG Members] MAC/IP conflict

[Peter Buxton]

On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 01:56:28PM -0500, Adam Williams wrote:

> I'd boot the server into memtest overnight and see if it comes up with
> any errors.  If the RAM isn't ECC.  Problems with cheap-o-RAM can
> occur suddenly.
> 
> What do the ifconfig packet counters look like?  Are they accumulating
> at an abnormal rate?

The old RAM was about 5 years old, so I think it held up pretty well.
But the problem occurred even after swapping server hardware (mobo/RAM)
so that's not it. The new one does have about 382 MB of PC100 ECC RAM,
though, so thanks for asking. ;-)

16/11 MB RX/TX, up 4:31 (installing the SymBIOS SCSI card). That is a
bit high for an idle network, but I do have a job pinging another box
once a minute.

> Ah ha!  What does your leases file look like?  Possibly corrupted?
> When did they acquire their conflicting lease?  Possibly a LinkSys
> card with a wandering MAC?

That is a possibility... a flaky NIC. But the dhcp.leases files looked
okay. I did not see any repeats of the name or IP# of the box that
complained that someone else had its IP#. I did cycle and clear
dhcpd/dhcp.leases, though.

> Mm.  I'd disagree.  I've taken DHCP servers off networks for *HOURS*
> at a time,  the DHCP protocol takes into account intermittant
> unavailability during release & renew operations.  It is actually
> really hard to make ISC DHCPd incoherent.  I've never had it happen
> except when the filesystem holding the lease database got trashed.

Hmmm. Then it is something else, then. I've written down the machines
that were here this weekend, and I'll keep my eye on the rest.

-- 
for gpg key: http://killdevil.org/~peter
Rah! My re-tox weekend has been declared
a success! -- James Coates, 29 Oct 2001.