system-config-network eats my cpu and memory but never opens

[beatgeek]

Hi- this is my problem: whether I type system-config-network into the terminal or click on it from the system/administration menu, it does nothing. On the command line, the cursor blinks at me like it's trying to do something. But in either case, the program never actually comes up. I looked at the system monitor before and after starting system-config-network, and that process is shown, eating up lots of cpu, but only using like 88 k of memory. This is misleading, however, because suddenly my total memory usage starts gradually increasing and never stops. The first time this happened, my disk started thrashing and I realized both my 1 GB RAM and 1.5 GB swap were completely full. I had to reboot.

When I first installed Fedora 8 a few weeks ago, I was able to get system-config-network to start as it should. Sometime after that I manually edited my hosts file to add the one found here: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm. That may or may not have something to do with its current behavior- I never used system-config-network again until yesterday.

Please help! What is going on? Ultimately I'm trying to set my network connection to use a static IP.

[stevea]

The system-config guis are written in python and I suspect you are seeing some problem deep in that code.

Do the "ifup eth0" and "ifdown eth0" type commands work ?
If not maybe remove the /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-* files and try again.

Any change yo removed of added some python libraries ?.

[beatgeek]

This is what I get:

# ifup eth0

Determining IP information for eth0...dhclient(1977) is already running - exiting.
This version of ISC DHCP is based on the release available
on ftp.isc.org. Features have been added and other changes
have been made to the base software release in order to make
it work better with this distribution.
Please report for this software via the Red Hat Bugzilla site:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com
exiting.
failed.

# ifdown eth0
# cd /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices
# cp ifcfg-eth0 /home/andvari
# rm ifcfg-eth0
rm: remove regular file `ifcfg-eth0'? y
# ifup eth0

Determining IP information for eth0... done.
# ifup eth0

Determining IP information for eth0...dhclient(5230) is already running - exiting.
This version of ISC DHCP is based on the release available
on ftp.isc.org. Features have been added and other changes
have been made to the base software release in order to make
it work better with this distribution.
Please report for this software via the Red Hat Bugzilla site:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com
exiting.
failed.
# ls
#

The internet is broken if I leave it like this. So:

# cp /home/andvari/ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-eth0
# ifup eth0

Determining IP information for eth0... done.
#

I have added some python libraries, like whatever was necessary for Quod Libet, gpodder, and a few other programs that use python. I don't think I've removed any though.

[beatgeek]

I just tried using system-config-network while ifcfg-eth0 was removed, both before and after using the ifup and ifdown commands (I see now that ifdown is what takes down my internet), but it still has the same problem.

[JohnVV]

well you are not alone i to am using that host file on fedora 7 i had no problems , but with 8 the network gui dose not work but uses 70% of my cpu trying to start it
still don't have an answer to it

[beatgeek]

Thanks for confirming the problem! That led me to believe that it was the hosts file causing the program to go nuts, and after a little testing, it turns out I was right. So right now it looks like the only solution is to copy your hosts file to your home folder, delete the original (except for the first couple of lines about 127.0.0.1 localhost), start up system-config-network, do whatever you need to do, then copy back your old hosts file once you're done, and hope you won't need to mess around with system-config-network again.

Should I file a bug report or something? It seems like system-config-network should be able to cope with a large hosts file- I mean, it's "only" about 600 kb. Maybe it's a memory leak...?? (I'm not a programmer- I don't know what I'm talking about)

[cheerio158]

Bingo! It is the host file! I have a huge host file where I include the Internet Pest List mapping them all to 127.0.0.1 (all 13 thousand of them). Guess that I will have to move it aside while configuring a new device.

I've had the same problem with FC1-7 and now in Fedora 8. Until I saw this post, I thought that it was related to configuring multiple devices. I see that these devices are hard-linked together in three directories: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, ../networking-profiles, and ../networking/devices.

Nevertheless, a pretty lame program! One would think that it would be a little sturdier by now.

Thanks!