Topic: Problem getting DHCP lease from ISP

[Dennis B]

Working quite some time happilly with E-Smith at home in combination with a Motorola cable modem.Life was good.
Upgraded 1-2 months ago to E-Simth 5.1.2.
Everything worked OK up to yesterday afternoon.

Suddenly connection to the Internet was lost.
Using ifup on dev. eth1 gave me a failed message.
Rebooting E-Smith server changing ethernet cards, power off modem and server, nothing works.

I decided to test if the ISP was still giving DHCP leases.Used a XP machine for it and that worked without problems.
So the lease itself from the ISP is not the problem here.

As far as I can analyse I conclude a few things :
Before the upgrade getting a new DHCP address from the ISP was not a problem(still isn't).
Changing eth. cards on the E-Smith server does not help.So it is not faulty HW.
Reconfiguring sending MAC address or user name as identifier does not make any difference.
Even changing from gateway to personal/private and back does not help.

My conclusion must be that the last upgrade changed something related to DHCP leases coming from external networks.

Anybody ?

Thanx,
Dennis

[Urirama]

Does your messages log contain anything useful?

[Dennis B]

No, just telling me that it was unable to get a address.
Similar if I use /sbin/ifup eth1 manually.

Dennis.

[Ed Form]

Dennis B wrote:
>
> No, just telling me that it was unable to get a address.
> Similar if I use /sbin/ifup eth1 manually.

I had a very similar problem at one of my trial sites on Friday and nothing simple would crack it. I was able to actually get to the site on Monday and all I did was shut *everything* down, including the cable modem and then switch it all back on in order - cable modem first and wait until the lights showed that it had registered, then the LAN hardware, then the server, then workstations. The problem simply went away.

There were no outages at the provider and the logs showed nothing at all except a sudden avalanche of '...cannot find the canonical name *.*.com...' from the cron system.

Ed Form

[Nathan Fowler]

If you're using the Motorola SurfBoard modem I've had similar problems in the past.  What I did was shut down the cable modem, completely powered off, for +20 minutes.  I then powered the modem back up and everything worked fine after that point.  I found that the SurfBoard brand 'cache' the local NIC MAC address, and if the card changes it doesn't work until you cycle the power for a long time.

Hope this helped, it took me damned near 8 hours to figure it out.
Nathan

[Dennis B]

Yes, it's a Motorola Surfboard modem.
I switched off the modem (pulled power plug out) for a whole night (more then 20 min.  )
No result.Still no IP address.

For your info :
I found out that there is a reset button on the modem.To empty the cache on the modem you remove the UTP cable,press the (very tiny) reset button with a pencil or paperclip,power off modem.Power on modem and reconnect UTP.
No need to wait for 20 min.

Dennis.

[Nathan Fowler]

Show me what your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and ifcfg-eth1 look like...

[Dennis B]

Nathan Fowler wrote:
>
> Show me what your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
> and ifcfg-eth1 look like...
Will do.Will take some time though.
Now sitting at work , will be at home after 4 more hours (sigh).

[Nathan Fowler]

You don't want to ssh in, oh wait, you cant.

[Michael Smith]

You might try hooking up that XP box and actually *releasing* the IP you've gotten from the cable provider, then putting the SME box back into operation.  You might also try running through the configuration script (i.e. logon as "admin") again to refresh the config files.

[Dennis B]

Michael Smith wrote:
>
> You might try hooking up that XP box and actually *releasing*
> the IP you've gotten from the cable provider, then putting
> the SME box back into operation.  You might also try running
> through the configuration script (i.e. logon as "admin")
> again to refresh the config files.

This was one of the first things I tried when I noticed that the XP did work.No result.
Reconfigured config back and forward,changing cards in the config etc...
No luck.

Dennis

[Dennis B]

Nathan Fowler wrote:
>
> Show me what your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
> and ifcfg-eth1 look like...

OK. You will find them at the bottom.
BTW, I got my connection back !
Had the modem switched off for the entire day (more then 8 hours).
Decided to give it a last try before I plunged myself deep in throubleshooting. And miracles still happens. I did a ifup eth1 and it worked without problems.

So I am happy now, but also a bit worried. Can I expect this every now and then? I hope not because I do not like to sit and wait until something times out. There must be a way to get a quicker result.

Anybody who has a clue ?
Or should I  accept it as a part of things that happen, like storm and lightning.

I will not let this thing rest and see what I can dig up.
I want to thank everybody who responded to my post and try to give me some pointers and/or help.

Dennis.

::::::::::::::
ifcfg-eth0
::::::::::::::
#------------------------------------------------------------
# DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE! It is updated automatically by the
# e-smith server and gateway software. Instead, modify the source
# template in the /etc/e-smith/templates-custom directory. For more
# information, see http://www.e-smith.org.
#
# copyright (C) 1999-2001 e-smith, inc.
#------------------------------------------------------------

DEVICE=eth0
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.0.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.0.0
BROADCAST=192.168.0.255

#------------------------------------------------------------
# TEMPLATE END
#------------------------------------------------------------
::::::::::::::
ifcfg-eth1
::::::::::::::
#------------------------------------------------------------
# DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE! It is updated automatically by the
# e-smith server and gateway software. Instead, modify the source
# template in the /etc/e-smith/templates-custom directory. For more
# information, see http://www.e-smith.org.
#
# copyright (C) 1999-2001 e-smith, inc.
#------------------------------------------------------------

DEVICE=eth1
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPADDR=192.168.100.11
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.100.0
BROADCAST=192.168.100.255

#------------------------------------------------------------
# TEMPLATE END
#------------------------------------------------------------

[Nathan Fowler]

That's life.  It'll happen any time you get a new local NIC MAC address.  Now that being said, you can give your cable provider a little jolt by exploiting that SurfBoard modem and unlocking the bandwidth upstream limitation.

http://www.surfboardhack.com/

Yes that is a legitimate site  I don't endorse it or condone it.

[Michael Smith]

Until they notice and terminate your account ... which they will.