   what's causing this? dhcp?
  I''m presuimg people reading this don''t remember much or haven''t read any of my previous n00bish posts, so here''s a rundown: the system is an unknown Linux distro running on a Pentium 266 with 250 MB HDD space total. The installation is minimal, but has SSH1 and DHCP, and an IPTABLES set up. It''s been working fine (apart from some additional troubles such as the HDD fillin up) for over a month now. Three or four days ago, however, it started acting really weirdly. It seems like the DHCP server stops giving out leases after a while (it did so again, this time no more than 16 hours after a reboot). What happens is that all contact between the router and the subnets, as well as the router and the outside world is present - I can ping anyone, but no one from the subnets can anylonger access the outside world. "arp -a" says that the network addesses are "&ltincomplete>" ("incomplete stands in the place of the MAC addresses).There''s ~100 MB of hard disk space left and, what''s even more important - I didn''t even touch the system for at least 2 weeks before it started blacking out like that. I personally think this has got something to do with DHCP itself, but I can''t be sure. In fact, I''m unsure where to start looking. Rebooting the system fixes the problem - for a time, but it will soon black out again. I have around 150 people depending on that router to work, so this is causing me to be under a lot of pressure.The first time I discovered this, I typed "reboot" and the system responded with "initscript: Input/Output error" or something similar. Since people were really nervous by then, I hard-booted the machine. It has rebooted just fine over SSH ever since. However, why this is so, eludes me completely.   "Finishing in second place, simply means you are the first loser." - PouyaCat
  what dhcp software are you running on it?is it newish, or kinda old?if its BIND, and its old, i''d be worried about security... ;  Yep - it''s oldish alright. As I said, I have no idea even what distro I''m working with - it was handed over to me as-is.I''ve been searching the web for several hours now (again) and found several references to a similar problem - DHCP stopping to give out leases after a variable amount of time, with a reboot being the only solid solution -, but no solid reaplies as to why that may be so.As for security - this configuration use to work just fine for quite some time, only until very recently (as I mentioned 3-4 days ago)... Anyway, what''s BIND?   "Finishing in second place, simply means you are the first loser." - PouyaCat;quote:Original post by C-Junkie  what dhcp software are you running on it?is it newish, or kinda old?if its BIND, and its old, i''d be worried about security...    Isn''t BIND a nameserver, and not a dhcp server?;quote:Original post by ze_jackal  quote:Original post by C-Junkie   what dhcp software are you running on it?is it newish, or kinda old?if its BIND, and its old, i''d be worried about security...    Isn''t BIND a nameserver, and not a dhcp server? Yes, it is a name daemon. ;  yeap. brain fart.still, what dhcp softare are you using? ;quote:Original post by C-Junkie  still, what dhcp softare are you using?   The bilt-in one. Is there a way to find out its name? "Finishing in second place, simply means you are the first loser." - PouyaCat;  ps -ef | grep dhc this way you should be able to find the daemon... or try searching /etc/init./* or /etc/rc.d/* ;  After 3 days of stability, I''m beginning to suspect the ADSL modem, which did some weird things for a while and then blacked out altogether. It seems iptables cannot be verified properly if the modem plays tricks.Thanks to everyone for their input, though!   "Finishing in second place, simply means you are the first loser." - PouyaCat