Topic: Duplicate IP

[Alex]

Has anybody had a problem with Roadrunner and the dhcp client used by the SME server? A friend an I both use an SME server as a gateway connected to Roadrunner. Whenever we are connected, we are both assigned the same IP address. If we connect our workstations directly (both using Windows) we are assigned different addresss. RR tried locking out our common address, but we were both assigned identical addresses when we reconnected our servers. We were both using V5.5 since sometime last year, without a problem. This started when I rebuilt my server with V5.6. Changing the nic makes no difference.

[Jeroen]

Did you run update 2 on 5.6?

jeroen

[Alex]

Yes, made no difference.

[Bill Talcott]

I have a Windows LAN-mapping program. When the SME is scanned, it returns 00:00:00:00:00:00 for the MAC. Is it possible that RR is somehow seeing a MAC of 00:00:00:00:00:00 for both SME's, and thinking they're the same box?

[Alex]

According to RR's tier 3 support, they don't use the MAC  for address assignment. Instead the modem is their point of reference. To check this    I connected my dual boot laptop to the cable modem. Trying both Win2K and Xandros 1.0 gave me two different addresses using the same NIC. RR would not tell me how they differentiate the systems connected to the cable modem, but I believe the DHCP client is involved. I'll see if I can capture the DHCP packets. The other possibility involves a firewall I built and tested at my house and then brought over to my friends house. This may have confused RR's system.

[Per Sorensen]

Ineresting!

I have had exactly the same problems. I don't know roadrunner but, what we have is cablemodems. The problem has happened 4 times between different servers, all running SME V 5.1.2. I have never been able to find out what is going on, neither has the ISP. They have been trying even though they only support Windows. So having this situation happening 4 time means that there has been some 6-7 diff. machines involved. Net work cards have been changed in massive amounds to get the IP to change but it always fell back a dublicate IP situation again. The only cure has been to make a new install of the server software on the involved machines.
I have started to install cheap routers in front of the SME server, to avoid this situaton in the future, but that's another expence and it should really not be nessesary. My conclution is that something in the server, likely the DHCP client, keeps information that fools itself into having an IP that doesn't belong to it. This is driving me crazy since i have convinced about 10 of my freinds an family to use SME, and guess who they are calling when it doesn't work!

So... if anyone has any ideas....

Per

[Alex]

In my case wiping and reloading my server did not fix the problem.  I may try wiping and reloading both servers simultaneously. In the meantime I've been capturing the DHCP traffic between my server and the cable modem. I've noticed one possible anomaly: the client identifier field in the DHCP request does not have the MAC address, instead it reads "=..useraccount", but I don't know if it means anything.

[Alex]

Found the problem! There is a problem with the DHCP client that ships with the SME server.  Replace the dhcpcd program (and only the program, not the script) with version dhcpcd-1.3.22-pl4 from www.phystech.com. Reboot and the assigned IP address will change.

[Terry Brummell]

Did you pass this on to bugs@e-smith.org for them to examine?

[Gordon Rowell]

Terry Brummell wrote:
>
> Did you pass this on to bugs@e-smith.org for them to examine?

Thanks Terry. And thanks to Alex for reporting it to "bugs". As it happens
we had recently seen the same issue in internal testing.

The fix is included in the updated announced here:

http://www.e-smith.org/article.php3&mode=threaded&order=0

Gordon