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Going Offline with XP & Linux on same hub

I had an odd experience the other day while building a Linux machine. I was installing Puppy Linux on an old computer, and set it up for DHCP. I have two main machines in my office connected to a 5 port Linksys 10/100 workgroup hub. one an XP Pro machine that is my main desktop, and the other a SUSE 10 Linux box acting as DHCP server and backup server.

Once I had Puppy Linux installed and configured, I started to test connectivity, surf the web, use rdesktop, etc. When this happened I noticed my XP machine (only) got knocked offline. I shut off the Puppy Linux machine and I still had problems until I physically removed the ethernet cable from the Puppy's network card.

I tried setting Puppy up for static IP, but ran into the same problem. I then installed Damn Small Linux with similar results. Again, in both cases, lost network conenctivity in XP until I pulled the network cable. SUSE Linux seemed to be fine during all this.

The only thing I can think that might be a problem is both Puppy and DSL asked for a broadcast address which might be causing a problem wth the hub? Shere SWAG here. I'd like to hook the Puppy/DSL linux box up to a Linksys SD216 switch on a network with win2k and SUSE 10 machines and am wondering if I might experience the same problem. I can't afford to have machines go offline for whatever reason.

Any thoughts? What am I not seeing or configuring properly?

Thanks- Brian

Reply to
bpanders71
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snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in part:

First, the stupid question: you aren't plugging the Puppy into a Xover port next to the XP machines cable? Some small switches/hubs have one more jack than their capabilities. That extra jack is an XOver for uplink.

Otherwise, dump the arp and route tables from the Linux DHCP server. This seems more hardware than software. Try a different hub.

-- Robert

Reply to
Robert Redelmeier

No, I've got the port next to the Xover empty. I'll dig up another hub and give it a go. Thanks!

Brian

Reply to
bpanders71

Im not a network guru, but, could it be possible you dont have enough range for the IP addresses set correctly for your DHCP server? I know if a machine takes the same IP address from another that machine gets booted off the network????

Perkowski

Reply to
Perkowski

Interesting thought, but I have 95 IP addresses available for my DHCP server with only a half dozen DHCP enabled machines (including the XP machine in question), the rest are all static IP. The good news is this machine is destined for a remote office with only static IP, if this is indeed the case.

Thanks for the idea- Brian

Reply to
bpanders71

Follow up on this, it seems this all started hapening after a bad storm we had here and my hub got fried. I realized it was the case when I tried to hook up my airport express the other day and got the same problem. This had always worked before. I went out that afternoon, bought a 5 port switch and the problem went away.

Thanks for the suggestions. Brian

Reply to
bpanders71

Follow up on this, it seems this all started hapening after a bad storm we had here and my hub got fried. I realized it was the case when I tried to hook up my airport express the other day and got the same problem. This had always worked before. I went out that afternoon, bought a 5 port switch and the problem went away.

Thanks for the suggestions. Brian

Reply to
bpanders71

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