NICs lockup after approx 1 day.

[smu johnson]

Dear Patronsoft,

We have a huge problem that has been going on for weeks now, always has been going on actually. I finally decided to post here if we couldn't figure out what was going on.

In a nutshell, we have a dedicated computer running firstspot and nothing else. After approximately 1 day or so, you can't do anything with the NICs... ie, you can't ping out or anything. This translates to no Internet for our customers through the captive portal, or even the ability to ping anyone on it.

We couldn't figure out what to do and for a band-aid we wrote a batch file that pings a stable IP and if it fails for approx 30 seconds, it restarts the machine and writes to a log file. I have a log file here for you of the last week or two:

These are the dates and times the computer's NICs (both of them) failed, and rebooted:

Tue 03/13/2007
08:06 PM
---
Sat 03/17/2007
07:41 PM
---
Sun 03/18/2007
08:55 PM
---
Mon 03/19/2007
02:34 PM
---
Tue 03/20/2007
12:42 PM
---
Wed 03/21/2007
11:18 AM
---
Wed 03/21/2007
01:23 PM
---
Fri 03/23/2007
07:27 AM
---
Sat 03/24/2007
10:56 PM
---
Tue 03/27/2007
12:59 PM
---
Wed 03/28/2007
03:50 PM
---
Wed 03/28/2007
04:24 PM
---
Wed 03/28/2007
04:33 PM
---

Is anyone else having a problem like this? Thanks in advance!!!

[SteveOllis]

Yes.. We're having the same issue. I thought it was due to some Windows Updates happening on the box, but there's been nothing new applied for several days.

Steve

[alan]

The obvious question is, can you recall what has changed when the problem first appears?

Also, what is the exact symptoms of your problem? When you (smu johnson) say you cannot do anything with the nic? What network card is having problem? Can you do a ipconfig/all (or it just hangs)?
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[smu johnson]

The only thing that made us realize that this was happening was that we decided to run FirstSpot for longer than an hour. Before that, we had been only using it for 15 minutes at a time, just configuring FirstSpot to run according to how we wished... and when we decided it was running decently for people to use it, that's when we noticed it.

Now that we depend on our batch file to reset the computer when it hangs, it's hard to really pinpoint when it is going to happen so that we can do the ipconfig /all and see what happens. We can program our batch file to execute this and see what it outputs... but other than that, not sure what is happening.

When I say I "can't do anything with the NIC" i mean both NICS (private and public) can't ping anything or receive pings. We thought this might be because some other software was running at the time, but we reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows with the same problem.

As I said, we noticed this problem happening a few days after we decided to run FirstSpot continuously serving customers. It has been a huge pain the neck.

Thanks Steve for posting to this thread making me realize I'm not the only one! Thanks Alan for taking a look at our issue.

Have a good day!

[alan]

smu johnson, your problem may not be the same as Steve's issue, even though you both experience some kind of hang. So you did successfully run FirstSpot for a while before this problem occurs, is that correct?

Can you post your ipconfig/all output?
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[smu johnson]

Hi Alan,

The first time we ran Firstspot overnight, this problem happened a day or two later, and at the time, we had no idea what was happening. We just drove up, rebooted the computer, and it worked again. We kept doing this every few days because our boss kept nagging us as to why we were getting so many complaints, etc.. and drove up again and restarted the computer. Since then my colleague figured out that we should run the batch file to restart the computer, hence the week-old post about how to have FirstSpot in "STARTED" mode when it boots.

That's the story for what it's worth... This wasn't a problem that happened a week or two after things were working fine, it's been always happening anytime we decided to leave it running overnight. I can make the batchfile output an ipconfig /all command for you and post it.

Thanks for the quick reply! It's 1:48am here and I really didn't expect one.

[alan]

Do you have other network drivers in your Windows? In particular:

· QoS Packet Scheduler
· Network Load Balancing
· NetBEUI Protocol
· HP Network Configuration Driver

are known to have issues with FirstSpot. Strictly speaking, only “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” is needed.

Also, what OS version and SP are you currently running?
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[smu johnson]

Hi again,

We run: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] w/ SP2.

I had QoS enabled for both NICs (private and public). I disabled them, but didn't see the other things you mentioned. I only looked in my Network config in the Control Panel though, not sure where to find the other things such as Hp Driver that you mentioned.

One thing I did notice though, our Public Interface NIC doesn't have the Firstspot Hop Driver under the control panel / network settings. Is this the way it should be?

Thanks

[alan]

The FirstHop driver should be bind to the Private Network Interface only. So your setup is fine.

Still not too sure why your system hangs. Maybe there is a hardware problem or driver corruption in your Private Network Interface. I suggest you switch to another network card as Private Network Interface as a test. Please refer to readme.rtf for instructions to switch network card. Also, email us at firstspot@patronsoft.com if you need a new license key.

BTW, what is the chipset of your current Private Network Interface network card?
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[sairuz]

Ive got this weird problem also... Im using the latest trial version of FirstSpot 4.0.13... I try to ping the server and the internet from the client PC and a LAPTOP at first its working fine but after a couple of minutes the ping goes on a request timed out... I try to restart the FirstSpot service and i can ping it again and after a couple of mins it goes on a request timed out...

I try to changed and switch several PCI LAN Cards.. Im using a DLINK Lan Cards and Intel Desktop Lan Cards but the problem still exist... Any solution to this problem? Or any tips? Thanks in advance...

[alan]

sairuz, I think your problem is different (DNS related?). Can you open a new topic? Thanks.
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[TuanTT]

Dear all,

I want to have some explanations about our FirstSpot using for proxy
server from you.

Normally, after 02 days our FirstSpot can not run and I must restart
our PC and restart software then we can use right.
I make sure that our PC is good; Router Wireless and window have no
problem, and signal ADSL is good also.

Can you tell us what is wrong with it? Wifi at the lobby can not run
stable, this make inconvenient with us, we need good software and run stable.

[danielillu]

I have the same problem on a dedicated computer using windows XP Pro SP2, on a AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+ and 1gb RAM, with windows port filtering active (following http://patronsoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1084). All users use Mac Based Passive login.

CPU usage doesn't reach 100% at anytime, max is ~55%, and max bandwidth is about 2Mbps/700kbps, and there's no big relation between bandwidth usage and CPU Usage. At bootup, with firstspot v4.0.12, there are 14-15 processes running, using ~200MB of memory.

As memory usage increases, is difficultier to force user disconnection and when a user is deactivated, and active again Passive Login for that user doesn't work anymore and has to be deleted and recreated.

When memory usage reaches ~360MB of RAM, network gets stopped, no pinging from an to the FS computer, and of course, no possibility of accessing using Remote Desktop (that's from where I usually work on it). To solve this, take a drive (~200km), restart he entire system and return (200km more).

Memory usage increases at some kind of proporcionality rate of network usage (maybe at FS logs increasing rate), so when there's a high activity period in the network, system reaches critial point sooner than when t has a slow usage period. At high actiy, system needs about 2-3 days to reach hang point. When at slow activity it takes about 7 days to hang.


There's no HW failure, so I think is a firstspot issue, because when working (~280MB Usage) If I force system to use a bigger amount of memory (till ~700MB) system responds well, and when I stop that forced usage (using ethereal local packet capture results) system return to its point before ethereal(~280-300MB).

So, there are several people affected for a similar and inexplainable problem