David Higgs wrote:
On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 6:11 PM, David Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Greetings folks. This week I undertook a project to replace my cheapo home
broadband router with an old laptop running OpenBSD. Success appeared to
have been achieved, but I've run into a snag in the final implementation.
I set up the OBSD router (more info below) to perform NAT and serve DHCP
and DNS for my LAN. After a ridiculously small amount of tweaking, I got
everything working just like I wanted it. Here was the arrangement:
(Test hosts) -> (Switch) -> (OBSD router) -> (Cheapo router) -> (Cable
Modem)
The cheapo router was still in the loop because I didn't want to disconnect
the rest of my LAN before I was ready. Yesterday I decided I was ready. I
removed the cheapo router and plugged the OBSD router directly into the
modem, there was some rebooting of devices involved, and my desktop could
no longer access the internet. A little sleuthing revealed that the router
was unable to retrieve an address from the modem.
I've done some poking around and searched the list archives. There were a
couple of threads with similar issues, but no definitive solutions that I
found. There were references to cable modems only wanting to serve one
hardware address, but I'm able to use it with either the cheapo router, or
with my desktop plugged directly into it (and I verified that the modem saw
them as two different hardware addresses... no weird proxying going on in
the router). I powered the modem completely down for a few minutes and
plugged only the OBSD router into it when I brought it back up, but still
no luck.
The hostname.ep1 file for that interface is a simple "dhcp NONE NONE NONE".
The dhclient.conf file is the default, which includes "send host-name
"hostname";", the only other helpful suggestion I saw in the list archives.
I've tried multiple cables and NICs, to rule out hardware.
I checked the dhclient.conf file on the Ubuntu desktop that pulls an
address from the modem just fine (which is this one, so I'm sure it really
works), and while not identical, it's only configured to send the hostname
as well.
I've hit dead ends with everything now, and so any further suggestions are
quite welcome.
More info on the OBSD box:
It's an old Toshiba Satellite 330CDS. I installed OBSD 4.2 with just
base42, etc42, and man42. The only non-stock program running is
isc-dhcp-server-3.0.4p0.tgz, which I installed in order to get dynamic DNS
going. The laptop has two PCMCIA NICs, ep1 (external) and ne3 (internal).
The setup was done primarily by bending the following two guides to my
setup:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/example1.html
http://www.bsdguides.org/guides/openbsd/networking/dynamic_dns_dhcp.php
The former is just the sample home router from the PF guide, and the latter
addresses DHCP and DNS.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
David Murphy
Firstly, post something that might help someone troubleshoot your
problems. Something like a dmesg and any errors that dhclient is
producing.
Disable everything until you can get dhclient to work. Are you
blocking dhcp packets with pf? Is your local dynamic DNS service
screwing with your upstream DHCP?
Maybe try unplugging your cable modem for a bit, sometimes they get
picky about how many MAC addresses they'll give IPs to.
--david
Forgive me but I will ask a very stupid question. Did you use a cross
over cable when you connected the OpenBSD box to switch. Your switch
should also have a button for one of its LAN plugs so that when you use
regular CAT 5 cable it reverse the stream so that you do not need to buy
cross over cable.
If the hardware set up is OK you will really need to give much more info
about the network and OpenBSD box in particular
so that people can trouble shut.
Best,
Predrag
