[CentOS] File retrieval from outside hangs, internally is okay, only Centos5 affected

Sun Oct 7 21:01:20 UTC 2007
Robert <kerplop at sbcglobal.net>

Miskell, Craig wrote:
>> I have a really weird problem with some of my servers, namely all the
>> ones running Centos5
>>
>> When I try to download a file from the server to a machine outside our
>> Cisco 6500 router/firewall, the download hangs about half the times
>> (15 out of 40) when less than half a megabyte into the transfer
>> (varied from 76 kb to 496 kb).
>>
>> One server has a portchannel (Cisco speak for ethernet bundle), others
>> do not, some use e1000, some use broadcom, I've tried httpd and scp
>> transfers, I've tried from three different clients,
>>
>> Here's the really annoying part: the problem only occurs when
>> downloading from outside the firewall, not when transferring files
>> internally in the serverroom! And the switch is the firewall is a
>> modular chassis, so the data comes over the same backplane regardless.
>>
>> And there's 42 files in /proc/net/sys/ipv4 which differ between EL4
>> and Centos5, so I'm a little lost here
>>
>> Anybody got some ideas?
>>     
> Just to state the obvious (well, obvious to me), which you don't seem to
> have mentioned above: The filtering part of the 6500 is dropping the
> traffic, and is dropping it because of something that Centos 5 is doing
> differently from EL4.  I think there was a post to this list just last
> week about something similar; I don't have time to search the archive,
> but it is something to do with a TCP option/extension which is on in
> Centos 5, but can be turned off via a setting in /proc somewhere; the
> extension should be acceptable to all firewalls/routers (uses a
> previously unused few bits in the TCP header), but some decide it's not
> valid and drop packets/connections.
>
> Craig Miskell
>   
<snip>

You might be thinking of the thread that climaxed about here:
http://marc.info/?l=centos&m=119033374928629&w=2
The entire thread makes interesting reading, esp as a post-mortem.