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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!news.accessone.com!not-for-mail From: jdp@polstra.com (John Polstra) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: FreeBSD crashes TCP/IP printer Date: 13 Dec 1995 12:42:50 -0800 Organization: Polstra & Co., Seattle, WA Lines: 47 Message-ID: <4andsa$l3@austin.polstra.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: austin.polstra.com Please, if you have any idea how to track down the cause of this problem, let me know! Something _very_ strange is going on between my two FreeBSD machines and my network printer. Merely connecting to the printer from a FreeBSD machine crashes the printer. Connecting to the printer in exactly the same way from either of two other machines works fine. The printer is a Lexmark 4039, with an Ethernet card that supports TCP/IP. The printer's network interface supports several ways of sending jobs to the printer. One method is to simply FTP the file to the printer. I've been using it in that way for almost 2 years from a system running SVR4, and it works fine. (I have spooler software that does the FTP transfer.) But, if I try to FTP to the printer from a machine running FreeBSD, the printer immediately dies. The "ftp" command on the FreeBSD side just hangs, and "netstat" shows that the connection is sitting in the SYN_SENT state. From that point on, the printer is dead. I have to power-cycle it to get it working again. FTPs from my SVR4 machine and from my router (Telebit NetBlazer) to the printer work OK. But FTPs from either of my two FreeBSD machines kill the printer. One FreeBSD machine is running 2.1.0-951026-SNAP, and has a SMC EtherPower card. The other FreeBSD machine is running 2.0.5-RELEASE, and has a SMC 8013 Ethernet card. The working SVR4 machine also has a SMC 8013. Note, this has nothing to do with FTP itself. Merely trying to connect via TCP/IP from a FreeBSD machine to the printer causes it to crash. That is clear from the fact that the connection hangs up in the SYN_SENT state. (But, I confirmed it with a tiny Python program.) Because the printer crash happens at the _earliest_ stage of TCP/IP connection establishment, I'm inclined to think that the problem is at the Ethernet layer. Another clue: If I FTP to the printer from a _remote_ FreeBSD machine, (so that the connection comes in through my router), it works fine. Any ideas on how to diagnose this problem? I want to replace the SVR4 machine with FreeBSD, but I need to be able to print. -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-knowledge is always bad news." -- John Barth