Network Timeout error mess...Apache related?

[davec53]

Hi all, and thanks for just being here!

 

I am managing a server at a small university.  This server is an HP box, running HP-UX (blech!).

 

Currently, the server is located behind a switch in the IT department.

 

Until recently, this server was also located behind a hardware firewall, but when the connections started getting flakey, we (me and the IT folks) suspected that perhaps the firewall was to blame, so we took it offline and set up traffic to directly access the HP.

 

Things worked fine (for a while!). 

 

The problem we are having right now is that when the server is first started, and Apache and MySQL are fired up, the sites are visible from the internet for about 5-10 minutes, as are FTP connections/Telnet sessions, etc.

 

After that time has passed, the server starts rejecting connections.  If you try to access it via the internet, you get a network timeout error.  If you are logged in via FTP, you get a message that the server closed the connection.

 

The very strange thing is that the IT guy I'm working with to resolve this says that he can still access everything just fine FROM the switch, so...it is viewable from one side of the switch (the INSIDE, so to speak), but not from the outside.

 

We are currently at a loss to figure out what is going on.  The IT guy today found some entries in the host file that he thought may have been causing the trouble, so he stripped those out, restarted Apache, and all was fine...for about the same amount of time, after which the server started rejecting connections again.

 

This leads me to think that somewhere in there, Apache is shutting off outside-world connections after a specified period of time, but I have no idea whether or not that is really even possible or if a setting exists that controls that.

 

I will offer up more information as I can get it, but I wanted to at least throw this out there and get some thoughts...

 

thanks!!

[davec53]

an update...

 

My IT guy restarted Apache, and i was able to access the box again (however briefly...seems to be around 10 minutes or so).

 

Anyway, I checked the error log, and found a couple of "exit signal Segmentation fault" listings near the bottom of the log.

 

After googling, it looks like those can be cause by some conflict between PHP and MySQL, so my next step I think will be to try recompiling Apache with a newer version of PHP to see if that solves it.