SUMMARY: FTP transfer hangs in Solaris 8

Many thanks to everyone who responded to this question with possible
solutions and laptop recommendations.  It turns out that the file will
transfer eventually, if I let my laptop sit for about 5 minutes.  Not sure
why it has this problem, but subsequent transfers begin immediately.  I
tried increasing the swap space on my Windows system, but that didn't help
either.  I did not get a chance to try ChinTu's suggestion of reducing the
MTU size on the Solaris interface yet, but will try that in further testing.
In the meantime, the summary is "have patience, the transfer will begin
eventually, and once it does, it will transfer at the best possible rate."
Once it started, the 1GB file took about 5 minutes to transfer to the
Solaris 8 server (CAT5 cross-connect cable between the laptop and Solaris 8
server, both configured to use 100MBps/Full Duplex).  On a side note, both
systems have always been nailed at 100/Full Duplex, in case anyone thought
(like I did) that that might be the issue.

Thanks again to:

ChinTu
Lars Hecking
Gert-Jan Hagenaars
Thomas Wardman
Sean Quaint
Ozgur C. Demir

Sincerely,

Steve Chapman
--------------------------
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
I tried FTP'ing a 1GB file from a Windows 2000 laptop to a Solaris 8 machine
and the process kept hanging.  I had no problem transferring a 500MB file
from the same laptop to the same Solaris 8 server.  Here's what I saw:

From Windows 2000 server, I FTP'ed to the Solaris 8 server, connected as
root (with appropriate password), set type to binary, turned on hash marks,
then tried to put the 1GB file onto the Solaris box.  My Windows laptop
immediately hangs.

I tried eliminating the switch from the equation by using a cross-connect
cable directly from the laptop to the Solaris 8 server, but that didn't
help.  I had no problem transferring the file to a Solaris 7 machine, and it
even transferred across the network to a different Solaris 8 machine.  

I tried installing an FTP server on my Windows 2000 box and then using the
Solaris 8 server as the client.  In my log files, I see the Solaris 8 client
log in and request to get the file, but nothing after that (and, of course,
the Windows 2000 client hangs).

Does anyone know of any setting in Solaris 8 that might tell a server to
ignore FTP file transfer requests greater than 500MB?  Anyone have any
suggestions as to what configuration settings I should look at on the
Solaris 8 server?

Upon further troubleshooting, I found that this was only an issue on servers
using Solaris 8 2/02.  I was able to upload the 1GB file to Solaris 8
servers built using a prior release.  Someone in my office suggested I
needed as much server space free as the size of the file (I had only 850MB
free), so I cleaned up a few directories and tried again, and successfully
uploaded the file.  However, two of the other people trying to upload the
file from their Windows 98 laptops are still unable to upload the file, and
they have 5-6 GB free.  Strange...

Any ideas would be appreciated (aside from not using Windows...  I'm still
trying to get a UNIX-based laptop approved by Finance). :)
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers