Why won't my Linux machine play nice?
June 4, 2008 3:51 PM 
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Red Hat Linux won't correctly mount USB flash drive. Also cannot send email. (Although I can log into Gmail, just not send email, chat is also blocked.) FTP from Linux machine to other computers is ok, but we cannot FTP into the Linux machine from Mac or Windows. Are these problems related? Help?
We are running the latest kernel of Red Hat 7, and we have also tried to boot into older kernels. I can usually figure out what is wrong with this machine, but we are stumped on this one. Several restarts have not fixed anything.
Network issues:
-Can log into Gmail, chat is blocked, can't send emails.
-Can FTP to two other machines running Irix (old school, I know)
-Cannot FTP to my Mac
-Cannot FTP from my Mac or PC's on the network, or it will connect and the transfer will time out.
USB issue:
-Do not have automount set up, but typing mount /mnt/flash in terminal window will sort of "fake mount" the flash drive and clicking on it shows files that are not actually on the drive or on a filesystem that is not accessible to Windows or Mac.
A quandry!
We have tried modifying fstab many times. Email has worked as recently as this weekend, although I have noticed the USB flash drive issue for a while now. We've also tried a few different flash drives, and they all do the same thing, we've even formatted one to see if there was some weird partition of the drive that Linux was accessing -- same thing, it puts the files in a weird place and then the PC can't see them.
(Disclaimer: I would say that I am above the average American's computer skills, and I'm reasonably adept at the command line, but I never do very complicated stuff with Linux/Unix other than simple tasks I do routinely for work. I am definitely not a programmer. Mainly the Linux machine runs a few weird programs and talks to the other computers that run Irix. )
There are no errors that the computer is giving during these processes, just timing out on emails/ftps and not showing files on the flash drive. Hopefully I've been descriptive enough here, let me know if you need more details. Thanks!
posted by sararah to computers & internet (8 comments total)
I'd rule out firewall rules first to deal with the connection issues. /sbin/iptables -L -n will list all currently loaded firewall rules. iptables -F will remove (flush) all currently loaded rules - don't do this if have rules and don't have the knowhow/script/ability to recreate them. However, I'm skeptical this is the cause. I'd also look at the speed and duplex settings on the network interface - make sure you don't have a duplex issue causing errors or dropped packets. ethtool ethX (replace X with the ethernet interface number) to check speed and duplex, and ifconfig ethX to check for errors. Possibly a bad nic / switch port / cable (all relatively easy to check).
As for the issues with the flash drive, make sure the usb-storage module is loaded (/sbin/modprobe usb-storage). Check the output of dmesg - it will show you what scsi device the flash drive is presenting as. try and mount the flash drive by hand. So if the drive is sda, for instance, try: mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash as root.
good luck.
posted by namewithoutwords at 4:31 PM on June 4, 2008