Guys,

 

I am having some majorly strange connection issues.  I am not even sure about the extent of the problems and whether it is a problem with my server (hardware), software I am running, or the router (or other hardware??), so I will simply try to detail what I have experienced so far. 

 

Sorry for the long winded explanations here, I have simply dumped my experiences and thoughts on to the page 

 

Ok, a little bit of history first.  I have been using Unraid 4.7 (mainly) as a Squeezebox server for the last 5 years without any issues or hiccups at all.  This is mostly accessed from wireless network, although I have one laptop hardwired to the router as well.  In March I got a new DSL contract and hence my router was switched out.  Everything was fine. 2 weeks ago I go on holiday for a week and unplug the server, router etc... (as I always do when I go away).  Since coming back I am having the following problems:

 

- I am unable to listen to music consistenly using my squeezeboxs connected to Squeezebox server.  A connection to the server is lost every minute or 2.  I can however reach the server over a Samba share and browse directories.  I can reach the server via Putty and have performed pings from the server which fail when the squeezeboxs are unable to connect.  This falls in line with what the Squeezebox server logs are stating ("www.mysqueezebox.com cannot be reached" etc...).  Why this is affecting local listening from my own music connection I am not sure, presumably they cannot find the server (Tower) at all.

 

- Connection to the web front end is often not working (again, DNS problem??)

- I have seen connection issues in the syslog (unfortunately not saved I don't believe) stating problems retrieving NPD updates (time stuff no?)

- General stability seems to be pretty terrible (one minute I can reach the server, the next I can't)

 

So what have I done?

- I have updated Unraid to 5.0 now that it is official.  Everything went fine, but the connection issues are not solved and seem to be the same

- I have assigned a fixed IP address outside of the DHCP range for the server

- I have tried other network ports on the router

 

Tonight I will try testing the squeeze boxes connected directly to mysqueezebox without the server running.  Hopefully this will rule out a hardware issue on that end.

 

I must admit the router that O2 sent me with the new contract is a complete POS and does not offer much configuration. Unfortunately I haven't another to swap out and test against.

 

Any suggestions or testing strategies most welcome. 

 

Sorry for this unstructured rambling mess 

 

Thanks.

The best place to start is to post a full syslog from boot up. It also helps if you itemize your hardware setup. Thanks!

Update!

 

Hardware is a HP Proliant server.  Sorry I don't know the MB or NIC, but suffice to say it has been rock solid for the last 5 years.

 

Squeezeboxes connect fine to mysqueezebox.com when the server is not running, i.e. going straight through the router.

 

I use squeezebox server software on top of Unraid.  This is definitely running as I can see the process from a ps -ef.  It's like the SBs are forgetting the IP or the name resolution for the server is up the kybosh, an example:

 

[13-09-23 19:23:04.1272] main::init (354) Starting Logitech Media Server (v7.7.2, r33893, Wed Mar 14 06:37:22 MDT 2012) perl 5.010000

[13-09-23 19:23:17.0104] Plugins::LazySearch2::Plugin::scanDoneCallback (2332) Lazifying database items not already done

[13-09-23 19:23:17.2837] Plugins::LazySearch2::Plugin::lazifyDatabase (2389) No database items require lazification

[13-09-23 19:34:06.6348] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: , retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 19:42:32.0468] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: , retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 19:47:06.0040] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: Resource temporarily unavailable, retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 19:47:48.7370] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::_error (596) Unable to login to SN: Timed out waiting for data

[13-09-23 19:47:48.7382] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Timed out waiting for data, retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 19:53:34.0039] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: , retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 19:56:44.1119] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: , retrying in 600 seconds

[13-09-23 20:02:15.0421] Slim::Networking::SqueezeNetwork::Players::_players_error (334) Unable to get players from SN: Connect timed out: Resource temporarily unavailable, retrying in 600 seconds

 

Also I have just switched to Windows 8 and am having intermittent problems with DNS there, for example \\tower is not recognised but 192.168.2.2 will be.  I am not sure if I need to make some local settings on the laptop or something...

 

Syslog attached, but looks ok to me.

 

Any help appreciated!

syslog-2013-09-23.txt

I suggest a GigE switch. Like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166058, $20 delivered. The current switch is connecting at 100M. Get some CAT 6 cables from monoprice as well.

...............Windows 8 and am having intermittent problems with DNS there, for example \\tower is not recognised but 192.168.2.2 will be.  I am not sure if I need to make some local settings on the laptop or something...

You should set up your unRAID as local master in the main webGUI under "Settings" -- "SMB." Here you can also set up the workgroup to match your WIN8 box.

There are other ways to force Windows to resolve the name TOWER to it's IP address if the above method doesn't work.

Thanks for the advice.

 

I double checked everything and I had local master set etc...  Anyways, this issue is now fixed. 

 

What I ended up doing, was rather than set a static IP address in the server config, I set that to DHCP and then in my router config set up a new static IP rule for the servers MAC address.  This seemed to fix the issue, well at least all is well now.  No doubt in my mind it was down to a dodgy router