[Sderby] No joy with smooth wall

Sun Sep 29 21:51:00 2002

Tony,

That sounds encouraging, it looks like the set top boxes make learning
new MAC addresses easier. It would be a good idea to swap the network
cards and make the Set top box learn the new MAC address in advance of
setting up SmoothWall. It would also be a good idea to put two different
makes of network cards in the SmoothWall, it will make it easier to
determine which is the GREEN and which is the RED. 

Before you connect it to the set top box it would be a good idea to get
the Green interface working. Temporarily give the green interface a
static address on your network, and don't enable DHCP. Make sure you can
PING this from one of your PCs before you go any further. If you can't
ping it check your wiring and bear in mind that the card could be faulty
or not properly supported by Linux. 

David

On Sun, 2002-09-29 at 21:38, Tony Martin wrote:
> Dear David, many thanks for the reply. I will try and have a go before next
> meeting.
> 
> I've got TV with ethernet O/P, and can have another machine running on it if
> I switch off set top box and the machine, close down PC, restart set top
> box, wait untill two steady green LEDS, then reboot PC. for a couple of
> minutes (although it has to go through a set up thing if it's the first time
> (probably the mac addess change as per your suggestion)). I am wondering
> about just swapping the network cards over to the old P75? (or even putting
> them into my main PC, logging on, and then swapping them back?)
> 
> I tried static and DHCP, butdidn't seem to get an IP in the epected range.
> Also could not connect to the smoothwalls web control on port 81 or the
> other port.
> 
> I will have another quick try now.
> 
> Many thanks for taking the time over this
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Tony
> 
> (P.S. sorry culd not make it to last meeting, but have been up to ears in
> work and a trip to Blackburn. Should be at next session.)
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Bottrill" <david.bottrill@ntlworld.com>
> To: <sderby@mailman.lug.org.uk>
> Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 10:19 AM
> Subject: Re: [Sderby] No joy with smooth wall
> 
> 
> > Tony,
> >
> > With NTL you need to do a little bit of extra work with Smoothwall, or
> > in fact any other PC you connect to your cable modem.
> >
> > NTL remembers the hardware (MAC) address of the first network card that
> > is attached to the cable modem, thereafter it will ONLY talk to that
> > network card. There are ways around this, firstly are you using a
> > separate cable modem? or are you connecting to the Ethernet port of a
> > digital TV receiver?
> >
> > If you have a separate cable modem then the way most people say to get
> > round this is to power off the cable modem for at least 4 hours. The
> > default lease time for your dynamic IP address is 4 hours so the theory
> > has it that next time you power up it will accept the new network
> > card's  hardware (MAC) address. I've never proved this as I couldn't be
> > bothered to wait for 4 hours.
> >
> > If you have a Digital TV box you are using as a cable modem then I
> > believe there is a web interface on the digital box, you may be able to
> > tell it to accept a new address here, I'm not sure as I haven't seen
> > this.
> >
> > The third option, that I've been using for the last 2 1/2 years is to
> > clone the MAC address of the first PC that you connected to the cable
> > modem. To do this you need to find the MAC address of the PC that you
> > currently have connected to the cable modem. If you are running windows
> > 9X or ME on that machine then click the start button, select run and
> > type in WINIPCFG and click OK. A window entitled IP configuration will
> > open, at the top of this is a a box to select you network card, if it
> > says PPP adapter then click on it and select your Ethernet card. Just
> > below this there is a box that says "adapter address" in the form of
> > 00-50-56-40-42-AF, this is the hardware or MAC address of your network
> > card and is unique. If I remember the first 4 digits is the
> > manufacturers code the remaining 8 digits is the unique serial number of
> > the card. Write this entire string of numbers down, ignoring the dashes.
> > It is most important you keep this number safe otherwise you will have
> > grief if you try and attach any other PC to the modem. You would
> > probably have to spend a long time with NTL tech support to get the
> > address of the new card registered.
> >
> > If you are using Windows 2000 or XP then bring up a command shell window
> > and issue the following command:
> >
> > IPCONFIG /ALL
> >
> > As I haven't got a 2K box here to look at the exact format of output I
> > can't tell you exactly where to look but you will see a similar 12 digit
> > hexadecimal string as above, make a note of this and keep it safe.
> >
> > Now to configure SmoothWall.
> >
> > You need to configure Smoothwall to use a REB - GREEN configuration with
> > RED being an Ethernet card, not a modem, ISDN or ADSL adapter. Configure
> > the RED interface to obtain an IP address dynamically using DHCP and
> > configure the GREEN interface to be suitable for your LAN. Are you using
> > a DHCP server on you LAN at the moment? or are you assigning IP
> > addresses manually?. You can Configure SmoothWall to be a DHCP server,
> > this is a good idea as it sends the correct addresses to your client
> > PCs, i.e. their IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server
> > address. If you are setting your PCs up manually to use the Smoothwall
> > box then you should set their default gateway and DNS addresses to the
> > IP address you have assigned to the GREEN interface on the SmoothWall.
> >
> > Firstly you should test the LAN side of the SmoothWall from one of your
> > PCs. Point a web browser at the Smoothwall,
> > HTTP://IP-Address-of-Smoothie:81 the :81 is important as Smoothwall uses
> > a non-standard port for it's WEB interface, this is so that it can
> > provide transparent web-caching if required. If this now works, use the
> > Secure Shell facility on the web interface to obtain a text console
> > login to Smoothwall. You will first of all need to enable the SSH
> > service, I think this is on the services section of the Smoothie WEB
> > page, either that or login at the keyboard of the Smoothwall. You will
> > need to login as root.
> >
> > Now you need to STOP the RED interface so you can change it's MAC
> > address. To do this type the following command:
> >
> > ifconfig eth1 down
> >
> > eth1 should be the RED interface, just check you can still connect via
> > the web browser to the GREEN interface.
> >
> > Now we need to change the MAC address of eth1:
> >
> > type the following command:
> >
> > ifconfig eth1 hw ether aabbcddeeff
> >
> > (where aabbccddeeff is the MAC address of the PC you previously
> > connected to the cable modem)
> >
> > You now need to restart the RED interface using the command:
> >
> > ifconfig eth1 up
> >
> > Hopefully the Smoothwall will now connect to NTL and get an IP address,
> > you can check this using the command:
> >
> > ifconfig eth1
> >
> > Providing the IP address is something other than 0.0.0.0 it should have
> > worked.
> >
> > can can check further by trying to ping something on the web such as:
> >
> > ping www.ntlworld.com
> >
> > If this gives you replies then you should are OK, you will need to type
> > ctrl-C (control C) to stop the ping command.
> >
> > These changes are not persistent and next time you re-boot the
> > smoothwall the MAC address will have reverted back to the original
> > hardware address of the network card you have installed, so the above
> > sequence of commands will need to be entered again.
> >
> > The best way around this is to have a look at the startup scripts I
> > think there is a script called rc.netcard.up if you look at the script
> > you can see where the cards are initially configured (using ifconfig)
> > you need to add these three command somewhere here.If you choose the
> > point correctly you should just need to enter the single command to
> > change the MAC address as initially the cards will be down so providing
> > you issue this command before the interface it brought up then that
> > should be all you need.
> >
> > I'm not using Smoothwall at the moment as I have a Linksys Cable modem
> > router. This too has a web interface and has the option to override the
> > MAC address of the external interface from the web interface. I
> > suggested to the Smoothwall crew about a year ago that the ability to
> > override the MAC address from the WEB interface would be very useful,
> > particularly for NTL subscribers, although this is by no means a problem
> > with NTL, I understand that around the world many cable providers place
> > the same restrictions on MAC addresses. I don't know if Smoothwall have
> > added this feature to V2.0.
> >
> > I suggest that at the next meeting you bring along your Smoothwall box
> > and Mike and I will setup a test network to simulate the Internet on one
> > side and a PC behind the SmoothWall on the other, that way we can show
> > you what to do, if you bring the correct MAC address details with you we
> > can set the scripts on the box to automatically set the correct MAC
> > address so that it should just work when you take it home. It would also
> > be a good idea to explain how TCP/IP and Ethernet networks actually
> > works and explain some of the basic concepts of networking.
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 22:32, Tony Martin wrote:
> > > Installed both .99 and the new beta 2, but can't seem to connect. It amy
> be
> > > something funny with NTL, but I could not even get to remote smoothwall.
> > > Shame, I have a nice P75 just waiting to do the job  8)
> > >
> > > Tony
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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> 
> 
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