[Nottingham] LAN Party, Install-fest, Linux fun: Sun 12/11/06

[Martin]

Michael Erskine wrote:
> On Monday 13 November 2006 12:15, Martin wrote:
>> Certainly, a good fun day was had. More troubleshooting and hacking than
>> demos but there were a few games sessions (on the one Windows box).
>> All started at about high noon and I had no idea that Beeston was
>> paralysed at that time by a procession. So, I was there in the
>> procession of cars for a while...
> 
> That was the Remembrance Day parade!

OK, so I forgot!! (The parade bit that is.)


>> Meanwhile, Michael had already got various bits set up and was waiting
>> for the internet connection and server/firewall. First was to add a
>> second ethernet card to my backup server, rejig the networking settings,
>> reset the D-Link WiFi box and connect to ineedbroadband and whoosh...
> 
> Jim was there already with an absolute TON of kit all carried by bicycle - 
> well done fella!

He pretty much _was_ a LAN-party before we even started! Excellent stuff.


>> And... the whoosh was more like a Keyston Cops sliding around and
>> falling down episode (as in Charlie Chaplin for the youngsters). The
[---]
> 
> There's dozens of half-arsed networking GUI front ends that all just call 
> ifconfig(8), iwconfig(8), and/or ip(8) under the hood and thus far most of 
> them can only handle the simplest of cases.

Upon reflection and considering that I have had that D-Link successfully
working as a client before, I think it was down to the old problem of
confused multiple problems and too much rush to be methodical.

The confounding bits are likely that the D-Link only magically works as
a client if you _also_ set it to use/provide dhcp, and you must alias
your NIC to accept the full range of whatever addresses you might get
given. The sever dhcp likely failed because I had the wrong IP range set
(192.168.0.0/24 only instead of also 192.168.163.0/24, or even
192.168.0.0/16). Something to check out next time.

Many thanks to http://ineedbroadband.co.uk/ for donating the link. It
worked well once we'd got our end of the wires and IPs uncrossed!


> Looking forward to another LAN party/fix-it night. Perhaps next time I'll 
> bring the MAME cabinet if the venue suits.

Any chance of a NTU or Nottingham Uni event?


Cheers,
Martin

-- 
----------------
Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
----------------