> On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 6:11 PM, David Murphy wrote:
>
>> Greetings folks. This week I undertook a project to replace my cheapo home
>> broadband router with an old laptop running OpenBSD. Success appeared to
>> have been achieved, but I've run into a snag in the final implementation.
>>
>> I set up the OBSD router (more info below) to perform NAT and serve DHCP
>> and DNS for my LAN. After a ridiculously small amount of tweaking, I got
>> everything working just like I wanted it. Here was the arrangement:
>>
>> (Test hosts) -> (Switch) -> (OBSD router) -> (Cheapo router) -> (Cable
>> Modem)
>>
>> The cheapo router was still in the loop because I didn't want to disconnect
>> the rest of my LAN before I was ready. Yesterday I decided I was ready. I
>> removed the cheapo router and plugged the OBSD router directly into the
>> modem, there was some rebooting of devices involved, and my desktop could
>> no longer access the internet. A little sleuthing revealed that the router
>> was unable to retrieve an address from the modem.
>>
>> I've done some poking around and searched the list archives. There were a
>> couple of threads with similar issues, but no definitive solutions that I
>> found. There were references to cable modems only wanting to serve one
>> hardware address, but I'm able to use it with either the cheapo router, or
>> with my desktop plugged directly into it (and I verified that the modem saw
>> them as two different hardware addresses... no weird proxying going on in
>> the router). I powered the modem completely down for a few minutes and
>> plugged only the OBSD router into it when I brought it back up, but still
>> no luck.
>>
>> The hostname.ep1 file for that interface is a simple "dhcp NONE NONE NONE".
>> The dhclient.conf file is the default, which includes "send host-name
>> "hostname";", the only other helpful suggestion I saw in the list archives.
>> I've tried multiple cables and NICs, to rule out hardware.
>>
>> I checked the dhclient.conf file on the Ubuntu desktop that pulls an
>> address from the modem just fine (which is this one, so I'm sure it really
>> works), and while not identical, it's only configured to send the hostname
>> as well.
>>
>> I've hit dead ends with everything now, and so any further suggestions are
>> quite welcome.
>>
>> More info on the OBSD box:
>>
>> It's an old Toshiba Satellite 330CDS. I installed OBSD 4.2 with just
>> base42, etc42, and man42. The only non-stock program running is
>> isc-dhcp-server-3.0.4p0.tgz, which I installed in order to get dynamic DNS
>> going. The laptop has two PCMCIA NICs, ep1 (external) and ne3 (internal).
>>
>> The setup was done primarily by bending the following two guides to my
>> setup:
>>
>>
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/example1.html
>>
http://www.bsdguides.org/guides/openbsd/networking/dynamic_dns_dhcp.php
>>
>> The former is just the sample home router from the PF guide, and the latter
>> addresses DHCP and DNS.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>>
>> David Murphy
>>
>
> Firstly, post something that might help someone troubleshoot your
> problems. Something like a dmesg and any errors that dhclient is
> producing.
>
> Disable everything until you can get dhclient to work. Are you
> blocking dhcp packets with pf? Is your local dynamic DNS service
> screwing with your upstream DHCP?
>
> Maybe try unplugging your cable modem for a bit, sometimes they get
> picky about how many MAC addresses they'll give IPs to.
>
> --david
>
>
