network busy

[roeiboot]

out of the blue i am unable to connect to my Linux RedHat pc from a Windows 98se pc i get "\\Linux is not accessible, The network is busy", connecting to another pc which runs Windows 2000 works fine. any one have any idea what this could be ? i can ping the Linux pc, i can get my mail (mail server is running on that Linux pc) and also my web sites (web server is on the Linux pc) are working fine. tried restarting the router and also all the pc's but to no avail.

any help/tips appreciated.. until this morning everything worked fine, didn't change a thing.

 

[Chacalinc]

are you running samba? is the daemon up?

 

[roeiboot]

thanks for the quick reply, yes i run Samba and yes it's up. just re-checked & re-started it.

 

[Chacalinc]

iptables running? may be ports 139 closed?

Cheers.

 

[roeiboot]

hi, i just checked using Webmin:

An error occured when checking your current IPtables configuration :

/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.o: init_module: Device or resource busy
/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.o: insmod ip_tables failed
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters
iptables v1.2.4: can't initialize iptables table `filter': iptables who? (do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

This may indicate that your kernel does not support IPtables.

i don't recall ever doing anything or setting up iptables.. in any event, the problem is still there. i would understand it a little better if i would have actually changed something on one of the pc's but i didn't.

if in Windows 98se i goto Network and double-click the Linux pc the report is: "\\Linux is not accessible. The computer or sharename could not be found. Make sure you typed it correctly, and try again."

 

[Chacalinc]

hmm... take a look to the system log (issue [tt]dmesg[/tt]) and take a look to iptables:

is running? [tt]lsmod[/tt]
how close is the box? [tt]iptables -L[/tt]

if you have problems with iptables, upgrade your kernel.

Cheers.

 

[roeiboot]

there we have problem #2, since forever my system log isn't running (it fails to start and never got enough help to fix it) anyway.. iptables -L output is here:

http://www.roeiboot.com/files/

two more questions:
1. would it be possible it ever worked without iptables ?
(just can't figure out why it quit working out of the blue)
2. never upgraded my kernel, how easy/risky is that ? do you know of any good "howto's" on that topic.

 

[Chacalinc]

hmmm... you are using ipchains not iptables (quite old anyway). I recommend you to upgrade the kernel. iptables is replacing ipchains.

/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.o: init_module: Device or resource busy

may be ipchains is using the resource.

Upgrade the kernel is quite easy in redhat, just download the rpm file and install it, rpm will do all the job for you.

[tt]rpm -ivh kernel-2.xx.xx.rpm[/tt]

Cheers.

 

[roeiboot]

trying to update the kernel but have some dependency issues, most of them i was able to resolve but 3 remain that i can't install, see

http://www.roeiboot.com/files/dependency

may be ipchains is using the resource

any idea how could this suddenly happen while it worked for a few years ?

 

[roeiboot]

now i have a whole set of new problems (damn pc's :}.. first i get a message that says something like: "/lib/modules/linux-2.4.4/modules.dep doesn't exist", according to searches i did this problem should only come up the first time you boot, unfortunatly no, it keeps coming up.

second issue is that the NIC doesn't start for some reason, then i go to network configuration, activate the NIC and still there is no contact possible with the network.. wtf is going on.

thanks.

 

[roeiboot]

problem solved, see;

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1060426&page=1