Slow reconnect to server shares after inactive for a while

[PiMMeL]

Hi,

I have little Knowledge about Novell and try to help one of my customers out with a weird problem.
This just started day. No change has taken place in any way on the network or server. Not as much as a new patch cable. They now log onto the server which takes longer then normal. After log on everything runs like it should. If they however do not use any file on the server the connection seems to time out. If they start to use the software or document on/from the server again there is a wait almost as long as a logon would be and then everything runs fine again. This is not a disaster but it is very weird and annoying. The server has hardly any utilisation at these times. The Hub and cable is replaced.
It happens on each workstation so it seems a server problem.
They have Novell 4.11. the SYS volume seems to have enough space left.

Please help me if possible,

Thank you,

Pim

 

[DrGreen26]

Hmmm, sounds like the keepalive or watchdog is not getting through. Some possible causes would be to flush the ARP tables on the server, routers, switches. You may also want to issue the command..oh what is it, the one to refresh any IP based information on the network.

What I would also do is watch the network with a sniffer, capture some packets to see what the server is doing, then capture some packets on the network side. This does not sound like a server related issue, but hey, one can never know. It may also be a NIC card going bad and the NIC itself is having problems staying connected.

What else, next time this happens, I would try to ping the server to see if the response is there when the user tries to reconnect. If you get a ping reply in 3ms or less, then I would try an IPX ping (if you are using IPX). Again, if it is under 3ms and the user still cannot get connected, then the problem may be network related.

We have an interesting problem as well with trying to open files that are MS Word or Excel...and have narrowed it down to a WIN 2K issue with patches etc.

My 2 cents worth.

HTH
Mark C. Greenwood, CNE
m_jgreenwood@yahoo.com

With more than 10 years experience to share.

 

[DrGreen26]

Thats right, try the reset router command at the server as well, that will flush most information and re-establish tables etc.
Mark C. Greenwood, CNE
m_jgreenwood@yahoo.com

With more than 10 years experience to share.

 

[TheLad]

What hardware are you using? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Jetter]

To PiMMeL,

Just wondering if you have ever solved your problem. We have the exact same problem here with 32 Windows 2000 machines and cannot figure it out. I have read every post and help paper from Microsoft and Novell I could find.

Thanks,

Shawn

 

[PiMMeL]

Hi,

I would like to thank all of you for the input. I fought with this server for 2 weeks and then the customer gave up and bought a new server with 2000 on it. I have since then talked with a guy who is fairly sure that the problem lays in the fact that Novell standard install setup something what w2k has too. Files that are not used often or if harddrive space goes low will be compressed. This compressing and uncompressing might be the problem. All this time you might think you have lots of room left.

Thnx again all of you. I like this forum lots!!!