newbie college student needs help

Anon

I have installed Redhat 7.2 with Apache 1.3 on my home lan. What my problem is, is that when I telnet into my Linux box there is exactly a 20 second delay before Linux responds. Also it takes exactly 20 seconds for the Linux to respond to a clicked link in my php test pages.

The strange thing is that when I run the web page locally there is no delay at all. Also when I ping the Linux box from my Win ME box I get a reply in <10ms which is the fastest that windows can register. Another oddity with my telnet session is that once I am connected to the system everthing I do is done at normal spend.

I also checked the system resourses to make sure the cpu and ram were not over loaded but they were ok. I just don\'t know where to go from here and what else to check.

Thank you so much,
Tracy

Anon

A quite typical problem that would cause these things to happen, is incorrect nameserver setup.

Imagine your linux box, knowing nothing of a nameserver, or can't reach the one it knows. When you telnet to it, it wants to know what hostname you're connecting from (for log purposes mainly). It tries to contact the nameserver, and there is no reply. It waits until a timeout occurs (it determines that it can't get a reply).

Same thing may happen in alot of different cases, i.e. when accessing a webpage, starting sendmail etc.

The solution is either to make sure it knows it doesn't have a nameserver, or to give it a working one. Both can be fixed in /etc/resolv.conf (and /etc/host.conf , /etc/hosts .. You should be able to find more information on google and/or dejanews.)

Hope it helps.

mistcat

Terje's answer sounds very promising to me. That being said, if you don't find any solution there, you might check the linux firewall rules for that box. they might have some sort of tcpwrappers or ipchain rules that are slowing down your inbound and outbound access. that being said, they are usually slowed down by, you guessed it, misconfigured name servers. =)

perfectom

Hey there,
Yeah, sounds like a dns problem, but on your windows machine. I doubt this has anything to do with ipchains/tcpwrappers, since if it was, it either would or wouldn't work at all, rather than giving a 20 sec delay.
The problem sounds like you don't have a hosts file set on your windoze 🙂 machine. (I assuming you're not trying to run a local DNS server). Setting this may fix the problem. For example, I have a file called:
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
on a Windows 2000 machine, containing (for example):

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.20 my_linux_server
192.168.0.1 firewall

Windows goes here for host lookups FIRST BEFORE going to your ISP's DNS server. Put whatever the IP is of your linux box and it's hostname in the hosts file equivalent for Windows ME (I don't think it's located in the same directory as Win2k - just search your "c" drive for a file called "hosts").

Reverse lookups on your linux box may also be timing out for some reason, but try the above first. If it doesn't, check your /etc/hosts file, nsswitch.conf (for resolution order), and so forth. Put an entry into /etc/hosts for your windows machine if it isn't there (same syntax as above). Actually, come to think of it, do it anyway since it won't hurt anything if it's there.

hope that helps,
perfectom

tracy wrote:

I also checked the system resourses to make sure the cpu and ram were not over loaded but they were ok. I just don\'t know where to go from here and what else to check.

Thank you so much,
Tracy