[Gllug] Life on Mars

[John Southern]

I have just run into my first martian source errors while setting up a gateway. *

After this I had to set up a NAS box and decided to use the martian IP address internally (225.0.0.x). Damn Small Linux refused to assign this address no matter how hard I tried. Do other distros stop this IP address or was I just unlucky?

Where did this martian IP first appear. I can find a reference on Futurama sites about it being reserved for the Central University of Mars, but was this really the first instance?

* I have access to two subnets. A gateway box with two NICs, one on each subnet assigned by DHCP, plus a box on each subnet.
Boxes can ping one another and the NIC on the gateway on their respective subnet, but not the other NIC on the gateway. Initially, problems with dodgy cables, a misconfigured HPUX box and a fire alarm test meant I was running around in tiny circles.
Checking the messages I got

kernel: martian source 1.2.3.4 from 9.8.7.6, on dev eth1
kernel: ll header: ff:fe:fd:fc:fb:fa:f9:f8:00:01:02:03:04:05

Which meant the gateway was receiving a ping from a box that should have been on the other subnet. Cool! A sort of sanity check for where the ping was coming from.

Regards
John
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