[Users] Periodic "connection failed"

[Haines Brown]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 05:38:22PM -0400, Pierre Fortin wrote:
 
> How about using wireshark to trace the network traffic?

I had never heard of wireshark. I installed it, but the (hard-to-find)
directions imply that the Capture Options dialog would automatically detect
interfaces. In my case, the Interface field was blank. My wife's machine
has a wifi connection to my router, and I suppose the router's DNS is the
interface to which wireshark refers. I was not sure what words to type in
and had no time to play with it.

In any case, the watchdns script reports the same stable IP address on both
machines connected to the router. The only problem is that my wife's
receive function succeeds only once in a while. If the problem were a
random DNS, I should think watchdns would not yield the same IP on both
machines except only once in a while. Also, if the problem were between the
router and the mail server, my own machine would have the same problem; if
the problem lay with the router's DNS, then wouldn't it affect both her
receipt and sending of mail?

> If you're not seeing any output other than the initial address, then DNS
> is not changing -- actually, when checked every 5 seconds.  Who knows if
> something happens between the checks... :)

Because it is success that happens only once in a great while, wouldn't I
generally expect different IP addresses on both machines when watchdns is
repeatedly run? The odds against its reporting the same address would be
great.

> If you are running from an "su [-] <user>" environment, that could be
> because the sound is not allowed from that userid.  Or, your security
> level is setup like a server which restricts what commands can be run.

Turned out that when I copied watchdns to my wife's machine executable mode
was preserved, but when copied to my machine it was lost. Also I had to
change the watchdns script because my machine does not have a
/usr/share/sounds/pop.wav. 

I am tempted simply to upgrade my wife's machine from Debian squeeze to
wheezy and thus hopefully get a newer version of Claws. If nothing else
I would at least start with a clean slate. 

Haines