Home brew Linux Router reverting to 10.x.x.x address

Rimmer100 · 07-10-2007, 18:52

Hello,

About a year ago I got fed up of the crappy speeds I was getting through my Netgear RP614 (V2) router, and as I had spare bits around I set up a computer as a router instead. I found a guide (which has since gone, alas) about using Fedora Core 4 as the OS. At this point it was just really proof of concept so I went along with it. Followed the guide through and ended up with much better speeds and no baulking of the modem when I fired up uTorrent.

A year later (now) I got bored of the whine from the fans and decided to do the same thing again in minature. So I built a little baby mini-ITX machine based on an EPIA PD 6000E motherboard. Instead of a hard disk I've used a 4GB compact flash card and this time I opted for Fedora Core 6. I know this isn't the latest but Fedora 7 doesn't link my CF / CF-IDE combo.

Anyway it was a fight getting it up and running (especially as the guide no longer exists) and it all works fine. For a while. I'm an old NTL customer with an STB. It's the Samsung SMT-2100C. So I had to go through the provisioning service. It was a fight to get the new box registered, but I put this down to the problems in DA7 last week (seemed it was on the service problems phoneline nearly all week). Today I thought I'd have another stab at using it. Rebooted the STB and it got a 10.x.x.x address. Rebooted the router and ended up with an 81.x.x.x address. Super.

It was fine for a while, I was messing around trying to get upnp working on it, and then suddenly I was no longer getting webpages up. Check ifconfig and eth0 has got a bloody 10.x.x.x address again.

This hasn't only happened today, it was happening last week as well, but as I said I thought that was the DA7 issues.

So here's the weird thing. This hasn't happened with my Fedora Core 4 setup and that's being running beautifully for over a year now. I know there has been a bit of a leap between the FC4 & FC7. So is there a configuration issue here with maybe dhclient on the FC6 router? Any ideas of what I can try. I have done all the removing and re-registering about a thousand times, so I can't think it's that. I could try spoofing the Mac of the FC4 router but a) I don't know how to and b) I shouldn't really need to.

I know it's a bit of a long shot posting on here, but I was wondering if any Linux Gurus out there have any ideas.

I highly recommend the whole Linux box as a router idea though. The most noticeable difference was the latency drop on gaming servers. For UK ones I tend to get around 10ms when I was around 30ms on the same servers through the Netgear (yes I know latency isn't everything). It also just seems to be a bit snappier. Not to mention it can do other stuff like cache dns entries, be a web cache, sftp server, ntp server, web server etc etc.

Ian

xpod · 07-10-2007, 19:54

I have an stb as well as the 20Mb sacm and the only time we ever have to go through the provisioning page(10.xx.xx.xx) for the stb is when i`ve stuck a new(to the stb) pc or nic on.I usually have to add a new name for the pc/nic(and delete an old one first as all 5 are used up)

I`m certainlly not a guru but i do use linux as OS and as our router/gateway/firewall, although not a completely seperate box atm and just using my main desktop to supply the 20Mb to a little hub i have then on to the relevant rooms.

Makes monitoring what my lot are up to a lot easier

Rimmer100 · 07-10-2007, 22:46

Thanks for the response.

Having to provision the once when I plugged the new linux box in was what I was expecting and I've never experienced this with anything before. I've been using broadband through an STB since 2002, when it came to my area, and I've been hanging a router off it quite soon after I got it. Infact the old RP114 is sitting on my shelf. That was when routers didn't have tons of plastic around them. It was great until I found that it didn't route UDP and therefore I couldn't use voip. Then came the move to RP614 then the FC4

To be honest of all the problems I was expecting, this wasn't one of them...

MovedGoalPosts · 07-10-2007, 22:53

Is the STB's internet connection stable? I had a load of problems yesterday when it kept dropping out and got exactly the symptoms you now describe of unallocated IP addresses, redirections to the STB provisioning page and such like.

Rimmer100 · 08-10-2007, 13:12

It could be that it was a coincidence that it started dropping IPs again, and it was an issue with VM, but as it happened the week before as well I was inclined to think it was the new FC6 box.

Saying that it took me a couple of attempts to get the old FC4 box to be recognized.

Next week I am home alone so I'll have the opportunity to plug in the FC6 box and leave it and see if it all calms down.

Unfortunately because I'm a linux newbie I'm unsure of what settings etc could mess things up!

MovedGoalPosts · 08-10-2007, 14:05

You'll only know if it's VM, or you, by running for a while without the FC4 / FC6 box.

punky · 08-10-2007, 14:54

Try using Smoothwall. Its a custom-built linux router/firewall/OS specifically designed for this.

Rimmer100 · 08-10-2007, 22:27

Thanks a lot for all the responses.

I'm not a big fan of Smoothie. I've toyed with it in the past and it does a lot of stuff I don't want it to.

As the FC4 box has been up again all day without a problem, and this hasn't happend with the FC4 box at all I'm still inclined to think something is up with the FC6 box.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I'll have a play over the next few weeks and see how it goes.

If it does turn out to be a config issue I'll keep you posted!

Cheers

xpod · 08-10-2007, 22:43

More likely something wrong with your stb.

I gave smoothwall i try myself a while back but because i was trying to use a laptop with only one onboard nic i had tried to use an smcusb to ethernet adapter i have as the second network card.......it works fine between our stb and Ubuntu but i could never get smoothwall to see the thing.

That was a while ago though and i never exactly put tooo much effort in at the time.
All the "rtfm`s" going on over on their boards looked tempting mind you.

dragon · 11-10-2007, 21:24

try another distro maybe?

I have a machine running debian however its just acting as a server and not doing any routing so I don't know if its any good for that..

Its running Lenny/sid unstable atm

(it was running etch but I decided to Apt-get dist-upgrade it to unstable because the unstable tree had some packages i wanted and I got fedup of trying to find backports to etch)

Saying that Debian Unstable so far isn't I don't think its fallen over once yet.

Rimmer100 · 16-10-2007, 23:07

Interestingly it seems that it may have just been a glitch with VM and the DA7 area. I have had it up for over a day now and it's been happy as pie. I've rebooted it a couple of times and it still picks up a valid IP. So hopefully *fingers crossed* that should be that.

I even got upnp and linux-igd to compile and work properly