Re: network problems
On 29 Oct 1997, Ian Willmott wrote:
> I am having problems with networking on my AXPpci33. I am concentrating
> on getting PPP to work as this is my only possible connection to the
> internet from that machine, and it is difficult to participate in Debian
> development without IP connectivity. When I get this working I will try
> ethernet.
Hmmm...Michael Dorman has been working on getting PPP fully functional for
awhile now. He's probably the one to discuss PPP with. FYI, he mentioned
to me that it works, but that it's suffering from general slow behaviour.
> installed software:
> kernel 2.0.30
> - originally from Redhat, supposedly has PPP support built in
You may want to jump up to a 2.1 kernel and the latest modutils. Even if
you just step up the modutils, modules should work for you and ppp can be
compiled as a module and hot-loaded when needed. The newer kernels seem
really solid on my UDB and several others' systems as well. Granted, I
haven't heard of them fixing any problems that we've had other than RTC
support, but it's worth a shot if you have the time to recompile a kernel.
> First problem: on bootup, not even the loopback interface works (ie
> "ping localhost" reports "no route to host"). ifconfig and route show
> NOTHING. When I set these up manually, "ping localhost" works.
> /etc/init.d/network does not exist. (This is bad, right?) What package
> is this file supposed to come from? Isn't this where the loopback
> interface should be configured? "ps -ef" does not show inetd. Should it?
> If ping works, does that mean that inetd is running?
To answer the last question first, inetd doesn't need to be present to
answer ping requests. If I remember properly, the protocol stack handles
these things automatically. Yes, /etc/init.d/network SHOULD exist. This
should be ironed out in the next release of the base disks (I've made a
note of it already). netbase and netstd have both been updated since the
base set that you used was created, so this should've been fixed already
within those packages. As for the routing problem, I noticed further
routing problems with the 2.1 development kernels and the way that
interfaces are handled under such kernels. I'm working on a way to
properly ifconfig an interface and set up routes that'll play well under
both the 2.0 and 2.1 kernels. If you can, please post the changes that
you made so that we can incorporate them into the next base set when it's
produced. :)
> Next problem: PPP. I can dial in to the PPP server with minicom. Shell
> login works fine, so I presume that the serial port and modem (33.6
> kbps) are configured properly. (One glitch: the AXPpci33 serial ports
> emulate 16550A and are supposed to run at up to 57.6 kbps. However,
> using an oscilloscope, I found that they work at 38.4 kbps, but minicom
> will not configure them for 57.6; they stay at whatever the last setting
> was. Has anyone else seen this? Is this a problem with hardware, the
> kernel, or minicom?)
There was a flaw in one of the ppp package releases which would lock the
port speed down upon connect (not good and this was done accidentally
while patching a bug). This has since been fixed and a fresh ppp package
compile is probably in order because of it. Also, I was aware of the
serial port limitations, but thanks for pointing that out. It's
definitely useful knowledge :)
> I have successfully connected to the same PPP server with an Intel
> machine running Debian 1.2 . Recent comments on this mailing list
> indicate that there may be something wrong with the current Alpha
> version of PPP. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just wait for
> somebody to fix PPP? (It's outside my area of expertise, unfortunately.)
> Am I missing some network-related packages? Why isn't anything
> configured at bootup?
This is unknown. Regarding PPP, Mike is probably our best resource. He's
practically made the ppp source his adopted child, so he should know the
most about it. Unfortunately, he's really busy, but I'm sure if you
mailed him, he might give you some clue as to what's going on.
> [ Chris - let me know what I can do to help fix the unaligned trap
> problem in fdisk - I haven't done anything about it yet because of the
> sorry state of my internet connectivity. By the way, netstat has the
> same problem. ]
Netstat's problem has been fixed. I haven't updated my personal copy of
it since I don't use it often, but I do know it's been resolved in a
"real" way. Check the Alpha bug report page (linked to mine) for more
info on that. Oh, my web page URL is:
http://beezer.med.miami.edu:8080/alpha
If you want to tackle fdisk, be my guest :) I was thinking of rewriting
it to use the "backend" of cfdisk (in other words, change it's way of
manipulating the partition table structs to be more like cfdisk's, which
is much cleaner and "good"). If you want to weigh that out as an
alternative, take a look at cfdisk and let me know if you think it's
feasible to do this. I haven't looked very hard at it due to more
pressing problems, so I may have overlooked a problem with doing such a
thing.
Thanks and welcome to the "fold" :)
Chris
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