Gateway boxes running Linux

Your linux gateway box can stay up for an indeterminate amount of time. It will certainly go down if power fails or any component gives out.

Make sure it is on a good UPS. If we are called to service a machine without a UPS we will presume that is the cause of any difficulties.

Whatever network to which you are connected can go down. That may cause random applications on other machines on your network to freeze, slow down, or fail altogether. If, for example, your gateway box connects to RoadRunner and they go down, your gateway box will lose connectivity to the outside world and it may not regain it automatically.

Before you call MaineStreet for service, do try rebooting your gateway machine. Turn on the screen, press CTRL-ALT-DEL (all three keys at the same time ) and wait until the system tells you it is halted. That may take anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds. Once the system is halted, you may turn the machine off and on and it will restart.

The screen will give you a running history of the login process. If you are on RoadRunner you will see flashing yellow lights both upstream and downstream. If you are on a dialup link you will see and maybe even hear the modem dialing in. If you are on a 56k Sangoma WAN card you will see activity on the CSU/DSU although it may still be a few minutes before your actual frame relay connection activates. As part of the login sequence, the console screen should give you the IP Address of your outgoing connection. A clean shutdown and restart only takes a minute or so.

If you must turn off the box without being able to execute a clean shutdown or perhaps you arrive at the office after an extended power outage, you may see a different start up sequence: the machine will start up and automatically check the disk integrity. Depending on the size of your disk, this can take from a few to ten minutes. If it does not come back to its regular prompt, call us!

MaineStreet offers boxes both with and without maintenance services. Maintenance services include maintaining your gateway box as we do our own servers, periodically updating software and maintaining various security systems. A box without maintenance is set up once and no upgrades or monitoring is included.

In either case, adding new services and features is billable on a one time basis.

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http://WWW.MaineStreet.Com/linux/gateways.html rev 2001-08-10