SLES11 SP3 Problems with VNC

Hi,
I have done a brand new install of SLES11SP3 with the latest patches, and am experiencing a strange problem with a remote VNC connection to this unit. If I connect on the local or WAN using an android Tablet (VNC Viewer) I have no problems at all. However, when I use realVNC from a windows 7 computer, the VNC screen hangs after the login, connection reset occurs, and I am unable to login again. Also, I am now unable to ping the ip address of the server, and the servers appears to have lost lan connectivity. I can still log into the server, but have to do a reboot to get things (networking) working properly again.

I also use the same windows 7 realVNC to connect to another SLES11 SP3 server (which has been upgraded each time through sp1 and 2) which works with no problems. The main difference between the two systems is that the new one has KVM and the older one has XEN.

Anyone got any ideas or pointers which I can try out please?

Regards

ChasR.

chas wrote:
[color=blue]

Anyone got any ideas or pointers which I can try out please?[/color]

The first place to look for clues is /var/log/messages.

If you don’t see any obvious errors, look through other logs in
/var/log and subdirectories.


Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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Thanks,
I will check these logs at the weekend, and also try tightvnc on the windows 7 machine to see if this causes the same problem.

ChrR

chas wrote:
[color=blue]

Thanks,
I will check these logs at the weekend, and also try tightvnc on the
windows 7 machine to see if this causes the same problem.

ChrR[/color]

Please provide any additional clues you may uncover that may help
diagnose the problem. If you can resolve your issue, other forum
visitors might benefit form knowing the cause.

Good luck.


Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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Hi,
Finally got things working as expected. Traced the problem down to the wrong network card being detected during the server install. The motherboard has a relatek 8111E network chip on it, which should use the 8168 drivers. However, the install detected the card as an 8169 which has different drivers. Once I downloaded the correct drivers from the realtek website, compiled and installed the correct ones, I got a message that this driver was unsupported, and it pointed me to where changes had to be made (changed a flag from 0 to 1). At this stage the driver was not installed. Once I changed this unsupported flag, I re-ran the install again, and this time the driver was installed correctly. Rebooted the server and ran lsmod to see the driver was installed and lo and behold, vnc now worked as expected, and the whole server response time received a boost.

It would appear that the morale of this story is to check that the correct and latest drivers are installed for the network cards after initial server installation.

Hope this is of help

Regards

ChasR.

chas wrote:
[color=blue]

The
motherboard has a relatek 8111E network chip on it, which should use
the 8168 drivers. However, the install detected the card as an 8169
which has different drivers.[/color]

This sounds to me like a bug and should be reported to SUSE so others
can avoid the same mishap. If you have maintenance, you could open a
Service Request or, if you are willing to provide make/model of your
server or motherboard, I can pass it on to the SUSE folks to see if
they can reproduce the problem.


Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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Hi,
On site this week, so will get details of the Gigabyte motherboard this weekend.

Cheers,

ChasR.

The mother board series in question is Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3. All the ones in this series have the same network chip.
Hope this resolves any future problems.

Regards

ChasR.