Fwd: Re: Frequent loss of contact with ISP

[Ned Harrison]

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Frequent loss of contact with ISP
Date: Sunday 20 March 2005 09:55 pm
From: Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com>
To: Ned Harrison <ned.woody at cox.net>
Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org

Ned Harrison <ned.woody at cox.net> wrote:
> I reciently upgraded my home computer to FreeBSD 5.3 p5.  Sense then I've
> had minor problems connecting to my ISP.  During boot up it will sometimes
> freeze at the line, "Configuring syscons: keymap blanktime." or I'll lose
> contact with my ISP while sending an email or surfing the web.  From an
> earlier posting to this forum I found that "Ctrl+C" will let the system
> finishing the boot up.  Then I can easily connect to my ISP by running
> "/etc/netstart" as root.
>
> Everything works fine at least for a while.  However, sooner or later I'll
> lose the conection again.  I have not been able to discern a pattern to the
> disconnects either.  Yet as soon as I run netstart again everything works
> again.  It can be hours before I the lose the connection or sometimes I'll
> lose the connection again within twenty minutes.   I've searched for a
> permanent fix by looking throught this forum.  But I havn't found anything
> yet.  Though that might be because I don't quite know how to search! :-)
>
> I am a newbie using FreeBSD so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Spend a little time in the /var/log directory and see if anything is being
logged around the time you lose connection.

Also, more clearly defining "lose connection" would help.  What does
ifconfig say when the connection is up and when it's down?  The
difference between those two outputs may lead you toward a solution.

--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com

-------------------------------------------------------

It didn't take too long this time.  

ifconfig when running.

rl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        options=8<VLAN_MTU>
        inet6 fe80::20d:87ff:fe34:a64c%rl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
        inet 68.13.119.137 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 68.13.119.255
        ether 00:0d:87:34:a6:4c
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
        status: active
plip0: flags=108810<POINTOPOINT,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
	
ifconfig when not running.

rl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        options=8<VLAN_MTU>
        inet6 fe80::20d:87ff:fe34:a64c%rl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
        inet 68.13.119.137 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 68.13.119.255
        ether 00:0d:87:34:a6:4c
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
        status: active
plip0: flags=108810<POINTOPOINT,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000

They look the same to me. 

The error message from Konqueror:

An error occurred while loading 
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20050319/ts_latimes/policyoksfirststriketoprotectus:


Unknown host story.news.yahoo.com

Scanning the logs I didn't see any new messages or changes

Between work and rehearsal, I won't be back on line until Wednesday, so until 
then, thank you very much for your assistence.  I do appreciate it.

Ned