strange socket / dns errors

[ssl_junkie]

on Friday, the web e-commerce application on my Centos server stopped being able to communicate with several payment gateways throwing up errors such as :

When sockets are used to connect:
Couldn't connect to ssl://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com:443
Socket error: (-1243884052)

and when we try to use CURL for a different site:
(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com'

In both of these cases, I could connect to both of these ports using telnet, and dns resolution was fine using dig.

I was at my wits end, having restarted apache, connected directly using openssl from the command line etc. The only thing that fixed the error was a reboot.

Now I have some kind of a gut feeling that this was some low-level thing but what I have no idea. There is nothing apparent in the logs either in /var/log/messages or in the apache logs.

Does anybody have any ideas where i can look further for a resolution ?

The only errors are in the XML agent logs :


(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com' | 0 | 11 |
| 237108 | 1215798709 | XML error occured!

(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com' | 0 | 11 |
| 237109 | 1215799946 | XML error occured!

(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com' | 0 | 11 |
| 237110 | 1215800716 | Couldn't connect to ssl://secure2.epdq.co.uk:11500 | 0 | 2 |
| 237111 | 1215801371 | XML error occured!

(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com' | 0 | 11 |
| 237112 | 1215802079 | Couldn't connect to ssl://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com:443
(-1243777556) | 0 | 14 |
| 237113 | 1215803987 | Couldn't connect to ssl://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com:443
Socket error: (-1243884052) | 0 | 14 |
| 237114 | 1215804742 | XML error occured!

(6) Couldn't resolve host 'www.secpay.com' | 0 | 11 |
| 237115 | 1215810727 | Couldn't connect to ssl://secure2.epdq.co.uk:11500
Socket error: (-1240674868) | 0 | 2 |
| 237116 | 1215811971 | Couldn't connect to ssl://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com:443
Socket error: (-1239927720) | 0 | 14 |
| 237117 | 1215814095 | Couldn't connect to ssl://www.secure-epayments.apixml.hsbc.com:443
Socket error: (-1246960152) | 0 | 14 |