<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<font size="-1">One can but only try ;-)</font><br>
<br>
Harry McNally wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid43B11CAD.2000400@decisions-and-designs.com.au"
type="cite">Daniel Pearson wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Just an update on it for you Harry - I just
popped around to his place to have a look.
<br>
<br>
The modem is all setup and working, going through the modem's webpage
it appears to be in router mode, and doing a ping from the modem
through it's interface it can successfully ping 203.0.178.191.
<br>
<br>
Now, on the PC /sbin/ifconfig brings up 192.168.1.100 (through DHCP) as
the IP address, with the broadcast as what it should be also.
<br>
<br>
/etc/resolv.conf
<br>
search
<br>
nameserver 192.168.1.1
<br>
<br>
I could ping the modem (192.168.1.1), however was unable to ping
203.0.178.191.
<br>
<br>
Typing in "route" only showed the loopback.
<br>
<br>
Firewall in the way?
<br>
<br>
Wasn't too sure on how exactly the distro is setup (even though it's
based on Debian) and didn't want to play around with it in case I get a
slap on the knuckles from you! :-)
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
LOL. No you're fine Daniel ;-)
<br>
<br>
Thanks for going and having a look. You have now met David. The problem
is that David keeps asking the list and we are all trapped in Groundhog
Day.
<br>
<br>
Here's my Groundhog Day that is similar to yours but with a few more
steps and without a house call.
<br>
<br>
Feeling bad that David didn't have ADSL for Christmas, on Christmas
Eve, when I should have been taking Jacqueline out to dinner, I rang
David and proceeded incrementally into what became a 4 hour discussion,
including with the support person at Conceptual.
<br>
<br>
So I could start from something I knew would work. I had David use a
test dialup account that Westnet provides as part of their sponsorahip
of CA. David has two landlines so testing could be done while he
remained on the phone. We also rearranged his modem wiring so he had
both the dial-up and ADSL modem in circuit. I got David to dial-up and
start sshd. We don't have a firewall on his version. We do on the
latest one. I could then ssh in and have a look at things. I setup eth0
as static 192.168.1.2 so we could talk to the ADSL modem. I grabbed the
PDF manual from Netcomm and found that the screen shots are entirely
different to the one that he has. Grrr. I had him reset the modem to
factory defaults (reset button on the back) and re-enter his user name
and password. Setting eth0 back to dhcp and down/up and it correctly
obtained the first factory default IP; 192.168.1.100. All good.
<br>
<br>
I then brought eth0 down again and had David disconnect from the
internet (dial-up), change our Internet Settings utility to Broadband
(ADSL) and let the ADSL come up normally. David was able to ifconfig
and see the IP as 192.168.1.100 and describe /etc/resolv.conf to me
(same as Daniel observed above). All seemed well.
<br>
<br>
It was possible to use host to obtain westnet and conceptual IP and
also possible to ping them by name. Progress. But according to David
firefox and thunderbird would not obtain web pages or email
respectively :-(
<br>
<br>
I used wget to get a CA web page.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.computerangels.org.au/start.html">http://www.computerangels.org.au/start.html</a>
<br>
David was able to assist me to see that a file called start.html was in
his home dir but I never got him to check it's size so I now wonder if
wget just created a zero length file. Can anyone comment on wget's
behaviour if it can't fetch pages for "undefined reason" ?
<br>
<br>
In exasperation I got David to restore his own dial-up connection and
email and browsing worked fine. I then explained that I would need to
think it through and also have Christmas off and contact him when I had
some more ideas.
<br>
<br>
Cameron later that evening suggested using w3c to check if it really
was a firefox issue but we'd restored the dial-up at that stage and I'd
left David to run like that. We also discounted MTU values too but
perhaps that is something to check.
<br>
<br>
I never got to getting the ADSL IP to see if I could ssh in over that
to confirm the things that David was reporting to me. I assumed the
modem had some firewall in place and, after 4 hours I had run out of
enthusiasm :-/
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">So that's pretty much where its up to, take
it as you will as to where to go to from here.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Since we have not had any issue with any of the other ADSL setups, my
first step is to drop another hard disk with our standard installation
onto his system. David assures me he has not made any changes which
means the first step is to go back to our standard base (if you see my
approach). David has installed software before using Aptitude and
various plug-ins for Firefox with some success.
<br>
<br>
Failing that, I recommend to any of our participants going onto ADSL
for the first time that they purchase the modem from the ISP. David
arranged the ADSL under his own steam including wandering into a shop
and buying an ADSL modem. Conceptual supply DLink. I think David would
have improved his chances somewhat if he had asked us first and
obtained the modem from Conceptual but the next step is to try and
figure out if there is some issue with the ADSL modem.
<br>
<br>
The fact that Daniel was observing less functionality than I'd achieved
suggests that David may have done some more work on the problem
himself. I'd really want to start again with the modem from factory
defaults.
<br>
<br>
I really want a break from Computer Angels since it consumes a large
part of my life atm (when it needs to consume less). Jonathon (PC-PHIX)
suggested he would be able to drop out on the 9th January which is when
we are open at CA again too. I'm trying to stay away from CA stuff
until then :-)
<br>
<br>
If other people have some ideas (particularly if you know the Netcomm
<br>
ADSL modem well) by all means keep going but I'm going to set this
aside and have a rest from David's issues for the moment :-)
<br>
<br>
It's standard Debian sarge, no firewall (on David's machine) but no
services running either.
<br>
<br>
One thing to note is that it appears to be important to disconnect the
dial-up net connection before using the Internet Settings utility so
the routes etc stay sane. When I first started remotely checking the
problem, I actually got David to select "No Connection" and then reboot
the machine to make sure I had forced everything back to a sensible
state. If you want to flip between dial-up and ADSL, you should use
Internet Disconnect (off our custom XFCE panel) first.
<br>
<br>
All the best
<br>
Harry
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________
<br>
PLUG discussion list: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:plug@plug.org.au">plug@plug.org.au</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug">http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug</a>
<br>
Committee e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:committee@plug.linux.org.au">committee@plug.linux.org.au</a>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>