Strange Networking Problem?

[Bill Hayman]

Hello;

This is the first time I have tried to ask for help working with Samba, so please bear with me.  I have been a subscriber to the newsgroup for a while and have appreciated all the helpful information.  I have had a Samba server in my office network for about a year or so and have been very pleased with its operation and performance.  Recently, I have decided to put together another Samba Server as a "backup" server in case our main one goes down for any reason.  I have configured it virtually identical to the original server.  The major difference being that the original server was with Red Hat Linux 6.2 and the newer backup server is using Red Hat Linux 7.0.

When I reboot or power cycle the new backup server, everything works just fine, all my other computers (mainly NT boxes) can log into the backup server and share files fine for about an hour or two.  Then, for no known reason, all connections to the backup server fail with a message "Network Path Unavailable", and I can no longer "ping" the backup server from any other network computers.  Nor can I ping from the backup server to any other computers.  However the backupserver can ping itself fine, it just can't get out.  If I reboot or power cycle the backup server, the ability to communicate with the other computers in the network is restored..............for awhile (hour or two), and then the same problem occurs again.  It is almost as if there is a setting or configuration that is set to somehow "turn off" my network card in the Samba backup server.

I realize that this may not be a Samba issue, and is more likely to be a networking problem, but short of replacing the network card (which was working just fine prior when the same computer was an NT box), I don't know what to do.  Is there any Samba or linux configuration(s) that anyone has any suggestions on trying.

Thanks in advance for anyone's time and help.

Sincerely,
Bill Hayman
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