Thanks for all your responses. Apologies for the delayed reply - this mailing list is a real pain to use (wouldn't a phpBB forum be easier?), and for some reason my first post hasn't showed up on http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/index.html (yet later ones have), which doesn't give me much confidence.
As a couple of you pointed out, I can use PuTTy or the web interface to edit or restore my config files to the flash drive once I can get into the box. And once I can edit the config files, I can fix the IP address to anything I like. This still leaves the problem of guessing the IP address the first time, though. > From: Michael A <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ...I used the free IP SCAN utility to find out the IP > address... I'm not sure which utility you mean exactly, but although this would speed up the guesswork it doesn't really solve the problem, it's still trial and error. > On 12/10/06, vb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If possible, log into the console as root... Chicken and egg. :-( > ... if no console access, check your dhcp > server's table of addresses and figure it out from > there. Still trial and error, ultimately. And accessing the DHCP server in my existing router is a pain. > Tom Lynn wrote: > > syslog captures the dhcp lease and it's ip address nicely. Same comment as above. > From: Carla Schroder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ...null modem cables are cheep, and they are > necessities for administering headless boxes like the > Soekris. Don't handicap yourself by not having one... [Some extremely useful links snipped, many thanks for these] True, and I've now acquired one, but I still think it's a bit much to expect the average user to buy one, and setting up Hyperterm is a nightmare (especially since the required bit rate isn't documented anywhere that I could find!). I'm convinced that there is *no way* that a "real" product would ever be shipped with a fundamental limitation like this. All the routers, VoIP devices, modems etc. that I have ever used have had some way of either discovering the DHCP-assigned IP address (a display or voice prompt), or a way of configuring a fixed address (a configuration file, DIP switches, thumbwheels), or they just come with a fixed address that will usually work, like 192.168.0.100. Surely it should be fairly easy in this case to read the address from a config file that could be edited before first use somehow? Phil McKerracher www.mckerracher.net _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kriscompanies.com/mailman/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
