At 02.58 06/10/2002 -0700, you wrote: > > > > I have my Mdk8.2 box setup on our corporate network with a static > > > > IP. Call it mybox.foo.com. I have a laptop running Win2K that lives > > > > on our wireless LAN and uses a DHCP-allocated IP and lives in a > > > > subnet. Call it laptop.dhcp.foo.com. The trouble is that unless I > > > > first ping the laptop from mybox, I cannot reach mybox from the > > > > laptop. More problematically, if I leave an ssh connection from the > > > > laptop to mybox idle for more than say 5 minutes the connection > > > > dies. If I reboot into Win2K on mybox I don't have to ping first to > > > > allow the laptop to connect and connections once made continue to > > > > work for as long as you like. It just works.
I have this problem too and it's due (in my case) to the lan hardware (Alcatel OmniSwitch/Router). If the Linux box (all versions MDK and RH) doesn't make any traffic the switch will not know the linux IP address so the Linux box won't be assigned to any VLAN, consequently it will not be pingable from any machine (neither from inside the switch). The workaround was to make the linux box do some pings scheduled as a cron job (as another person says in this same message, below). One good practice was , too, to put in the switching hardware an ARP table entry for the IP address of the linux box setting it to be permanent and published (so it's always "active" and "visible" on the lan). And, I've discovered recently, the same thing is to be done on the linux box with the command ARP. example: arp -i eth0 -s "your ip address" "your mac address" to have the ip associated permanently to the mac address arp -i eth0 -s "your ip address" "your mac address" pub to have it also published So the linux box will know "better" what mac address is bound to what interface. I know , it should already know, but -always- if the linux box has two or more nics, in the ARP cache table of the switch I found the right ip address of the linux box associated with the WRONG mac address! So the switch did forward the right traffic to the WRONG linux nic. That's my experience. Of course these are all workarounds, if there's someone that knows how to fix it (almost) permanently, please do! (don't know, maybe fiddling in /proc/net there's a parameter to fix this...just a guess) Live long and prosper :) Michele
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