[YLUG] Interesting Networking Problem

[Nicholas Thomas]

Njal Munro wrote:
> Thanks for the replies thus far, i have tried a few things namly this
>
> ifconfig eth0 down
> ifconfig eth1 down
> brctl addbr br0
> brctl addif br0 eth0
> brctl addif br0 eth1
> dhclient br0
>
> This just seemed to disconnect me and not connect again, however i shall
> try again, also i beleive i mentioned the laptop is running dapper
> (unstable ubuntu) due to the fact i need the bcm43xx driver and it's
> only in kerenl 2.6.15 or higher. I assume that br0 does not require eth0
> or eth1 to be active while br0 is active? Also since i couldn't find a
> brctl in the ubuntu repo's i checkinstalled it, and it seemed to work.
>
> I can confirm that br0 was created but when i switch to the interface it
> just registers that it's disconnected. This is while eth0 and eth1 are
> also down, since i am assuming eth0 and eth1 need to be down while br0
> is up.
>
> Currently I am only using eth0 for wireless, i am discocnnected from
> eth1 and a quick brctl show returned this:
>
> njal at serenity:~$ brctl show
> bridge name     bridge id               STP enabled     interfaces
>
> Having only learned about the existance of brctl this morning, I may be
> mistaken, however it seems to me, there should be something there, no?
> Running the command as brctl show br0 and as sudo return the same
> values, is this a problem?
>
> The NAT route (no pun intended) i tried before, i beleive this was how
> the network was working before, but as i said after a kernel upgrade i
> rebooted and the routing tables(?) were reset.
>
> There would be an easy solution to this problem, does anyone know a
> wireless card that'll work in both fedora or ubuntu, preferably nativly,
> because i could just set up the desktop as it is.
>
> Eventually the idea is to extend the server beyond my room to be
> acccessable by the entire house, so a LAN is going to be required at
> some point too, but i wanna take this one step at a time.
>
> Many thanks again.
> Neil Munro
>
>   
The wireless 'card' (well, USB adaptor) that I use in Ubuntu and Gentoo
is the D-Link DWL-G122, H/W rev. B1 - it's a little stick with a funky
USB cable dipped in plastic (to make a base). Around £20-£25. Based on
the Realtek 2570 chipset.

Dapper has the driver installed automagically, but I had to install it
from testing (~x86) in Gentoo. I don't know what Fedora is like... but
you can always compile it from source (google for rt2x00).

The old beta 1 rt3570 driver can be a bit wonky if you're  running heavy
p2p applications, but the newer beta 3 rt2x00 driver is a lot better.

Regarding the bridge, I've been playing around with this on a WRAP I
bought (I'm turning it into a wireless access point, + ADSL router if I
can find a miniPCI ADSL card!); this is what I do:

brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 eth0
brctl addif br0 eth2

ifconfig br0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 up

And ifconfig -a gives:
br0       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0D:B9:03:F1:64
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0D:B9:03:F1:64
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xd000

[...]

eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0D:B9:03:F1:66
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1000
[...]

brctl show gives me

bridge name     bridge id               STP enabled     interfaces
br0             8000.000db903f164       no              eth0
                     
                                                       eth2

Hrm. Have you tried sudo-ing the brctl addbr & addif commands? I don't
know if you can do it as non-root (I wouldn't have thought so...).

Aside from that, I don't know. The only thing I'm doing differently to
you, is using static IP's... but I wouldn't think that would make a
difference in this case. Oh, and neither of my ifaces are wireless...
again, I doubt that it matters.

xF,

...Nick