Hello,

I have RH 9 running on my PC quite happily. NIC is a Minitar wireless which, after some doing, managed to get installed into the system. In the readme file that comes with the Linux driver for this card, the follow commands need to be run (as root of course) to bring the NIC up:

run '/sbin/ifconfig ra0 inet YOUR_IP up'

run '/sbin/route add default gw YOUR_DEFAULT_GW dev ra0'

I run these commands, PC able to see my LAN (which is all of 2 PCs, the other running XP *shiver* and Billion ADSL modem router as the access point). The router has an IP address of 192.168.1.254 so I use this as the default gateway address in the command above and assign 192.168.1.1 as the IP address for the NIC. HOWEVER, upon shutting down and rebooting, during the boot up process when the IFUP command is run for the device ra0 (the wireless NIC), there is a long pause then the following message is displayed:

unable to determine IP address (or to that effect)

Once I have logged back in, the two commands above have to be run again before LAN/Internet access is restored.

Question #1 - which config files do I have to edit so these settings are remembered and to remove the bootup error?

Question #2 - is there a utility which can be run and/or a config file which can be edited so an IP address can be mapped to a MAC address? This would be useful as I could map the IP address to the MAC address of the NIC for security purposes.

I am an experienced newbie (I think that is an oxymoron) so any help in resolving this would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to LQ

In answer to 1 - either:
run "netconfig"
edit "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 2. You can use dhcp to assign a particular address to a particular mac.

I think he's talking about ARP filtering.

Thanks for your help david_ross!

After looking at the ifcfg-ra0 file, the setting was set to DHCP. I compared the settings found in ifcfg-eth0 and transferred the relevant ones across to ifcfg-ra0, saved the file and rebooted - problem solved!

Why I asked the 2nd question is because someone told me that mapping or creating link between an IP address and a MAC address is a good idea, plugs a security hole - there must be a way to do it, ARP filtering like TheOneKea said might be the way to go. Is there a utility available that performs ARP filtering? The only thing I could find in my router settings was in the IPSec section...

I believe Ettercap will analyze all of the IP and MAC addresses that hit your network. If someone is spoofing thier IP, I am not sure how you would be able to detect it unless your logs are sometimes showing conflicting mappings between external IP's and MAC addresses.

Not sure how the mapping of your internal NIC's would offer any further security on your end unless someone is hijacking your connection.

Sounds like the following sites may be able to help you get what you need set up:

1. http://www.netfilter.org Set up a firewall
2. http://ettercap.sourceforge.net Network logger, sniffer, etc.
3. http://ww.ethereal.com Network protocol analyzer

Good luck