I had hoped to use this Debian Etch system as a squid server for work. However, I can't even get it to connect to the Internet reliably. It is an old IBM netvista, with 256 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive and two network cards.

I did have it connected yesterday, but if I hang up or (more frequently) get disconnected beause the cable was kicked out or the power unplugged of the ADSL modem, I can't get reconnected. The modem works as I'm using it right now with my Windows computer.

When I type "pon dsl-provider" I don't get any error message, and plog lists only my primary and secondary DNS server addresses.

ifconfig lists all my cards eth0, eth1, ppp0 and lo. The only discrepancy I've noticed is that eth0 (the card where the modem is connected) is supposed to have a static IP of 192.168.1.4 and instead keeps assigning itself 169.254.131.136.

the route table shows a default route going to ppp0, as well as an IP address going to ppp0 (not the same IP as is shown for ppp0 in ifconfig), the network going to eth1, local-link going to eth0.

What happens is my pon program basically appears to connect, but I am most definitely not connected as I can't ping anything or browse any sites. And the plog erases itself after about 5 seconds, but doesnt seem to show any error messages.

I have tried taking my ethernet cards offline with ifconfig ethX down, then bringing them back up. poff then pon. Using my Debian Etch network menu to "deactivate" then "activate" the cards. Checked all the cables are connected and lights are on. I've run pppoeconf over and over. No dice.

Yesterday it happened about 3 times but each time after fiddling for a while I could get connected. Today, I've tried for an hour and just can't connect.

Any ideas what else I can try? Thanks..

You are definitely doing something wrong. And most of all the eth0 address shouldnt be changed. The modem itself should have it's own IP address (factory default), however .. when using pppoe and use eth0 just fro bridging that interface doesnt necessary need an IP address on it. Are you using Roaring Penguin PPPoE package? Maybe giving us the config files would help us help you better.

Regards
Andy

Thanks for the reply. I actually figured it out. The whole time, something was niggling at me.... because I've seen this kind of behaviour before but couldn't remember where. Well, I remembered.

The problem is that the pon program and iptables don't like each other. I have to connect first using pon, then run the iptables script. In that order, every time.

The problem was that when my pon disconnected, I was reconnecting, but the iptables was already running. (in other words, it was iptables first then pon, the wrong order).

After connecting with pon, I have to also restart the iptables. Then I can connect fine.

Silly eh.... I remember it took me a very very long time to figure this out the first time I saw this happen. I wrote a script and forgot about it till now.

Thanks for the reply