DSL Actiontec modem...fix!

Okay, so...for days and days I've tried to make my Actiontec DSL modem (provided by Qwest) to work in linux...on kernel 2.6. I have FINALLY found a solution, after trying several times...and failing miserably. As some of you know...with this modem you can ping, and you do indeed recieve packets back, but you cannot browse any website on any web-browser. This is because on kernel 2.6, for whatever reason, DHCPCD detects the wrong nameservers. If you check your /etc/resolve.conf...you will see that the first nameserver is actually your ip number.

Anyway...type in 192.168.0.1 into your browser and hit enter to goto the actiontec gateway setup script. Click setup...and then click "Non Windows Setup". Click PPPoA or PPPoE...whichever one applies to you. Enter your username and password...and click "Save and Restart". Wait for your modem lights to stop blinking...and make sure that your internet light comes on.

Next...open up your resolve.conf file. Enter the two correct nameservers in it, and save the file. You will notice now, that you can browse (or atleast I could.) Problem is, when you restart...dhcp will automatically detect the wrong settings again, and overwrite your correct resolve.conf file. To prevent this from happening...find your inet1 file, and open it up in your favorite editor. I just opened it up in kwrite...so I could easily find dhcp with control + f. For me, this file is in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1. Now...press Control+f and type in DHCP and press enter. IT will then jump down to this area:

if [ "${USE_DHCP[$1]}" = "yes" ]; then # use DHCP to bring interface up if [ ! "${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]}" = "" ]; then echo "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]} eth${1}" | $LOGGER /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]} eth${1} else echo "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 eth${1}" | $LOGGER /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 eth${1}

After each of your /sbin/dhcpcd lines...add a -R flag. This will make it so your resolve.conf will not be overwritten with the incorrect nameservers again. Reboot...and if all goes well, your resolve.conf file will stay correct, and you will now be able to browse without any problem .

If this sounded extremely "noobish"..please forgive, I am still very much learning...yet fixing this problem was a huge success/learning experience for me. I also noticed, that when searching for problems like mine on these forums, it seemed that no one knew the answer to fix this problem. I hope this helps someone else like it helped me.

-RoaCh

roachofdiscor; what would would we newbie`s do without techies such as you(rescuers). thanks with that heads-up info.
making hardcopy 4 future reference.

I recently installed gentoo and am unfortunate enough to have this gateway. However I looked for this file and other possible startup scripts for DHCP, but couldn't find any. Perhaps there is one that I don't know of, and I'd be glad to take suggestions towards one. However I'm thinking that I might be using a default config and not have on. Now how would I implement this in that case? I don't suppose that just creating that script would be sufficient, as it's an editing job...

Thanks in advance.

This newbie, who just got an actiontec modem from qwest will worship the ground you walk on, right after I try this.

I had not problem getting /etc/resolv.conf set up - in fact, actiontec always correctly wrties in the name servers.

so, I can brwose the interent, but only for some sites. clearly, sites like google and yahoo use some kind of vitual hosting, with forwarding. those you can only get to by entering the actual ip address.

others on this forum are having the same problem, but not you? can you browse directly to google?

your fix is great, in that it allows internet browsing - in general. but actiontec still has a problem with sites that use virtual hosts, such as google and msn: you can only get them on your browser by ip address, not vhost name. so, we're stuck pingin google.com. the copy-pasting the ip into the browser.

worse: for a subdomain, such as gmail.google.com, the ip will just take you to google.com

I'm sure you will have the same issue, even with your fix.

I've read hundreds of posts that claim it is a RedHat problem, a Suse problem, a Debian problem. Even BSD sites list the same issue. So, guess what: it's an actiontec problem.

I'm not really psting this to you alone - it's to solicit help from the group

thanks again for your anything-but-newbie fix!

Have you added your PC as a name server?

thanks. I never thought of putting my own machine (I assumed you meant the IP assigned to my PC, and/hostname - I put both).

except that's not really our problem - name resolution, that is. all the posts regarding resolv.conf are a little "off the mark" - except if, for some reason, you're not able to ping anything.

but, for most of us, resolv.conf and nameservers are clearly not the problem, because we can all ping by hostname, in bash - that's how we can get the ip address to put into our browser.

somehow, Firefox and Mozilla can't do this - but I could live with that. still I keep it as a "clue" to the underlying problem.

another clue - most of these posts across the internet deal with 2.6.x kernels. I bet this isn't a problem prior to this (although I think I have seen the issue mentioned in Debian groups, which is at kernel 2.1). this is ossibly relevant because of the extended use of iptables in 2.6 onward - every ip based activity now takes a lot longer than before - have you ever noticed how long it takes to bring up samba and sendmail lately?

so, we can still resolve the hostname - the reall problem is that packets are not getting sent/routed.

Oddly enough, I've had no problems since I put my IP address in resolv.config. Putting the actiontec IP address in resolv.config enable me to ping specific IP addresses, but not to visit yahoo, cnn, etc. with any of the browsers.

I also had all the same problems with the actiontec modem. I found (after running ethereal) that the modem had set itself up as the primary name server and was returning 0.0.0.1 as the ip address for any name it could not resolve. However, if I did an nslookup first, it would provide the correct address and continue to provide the correct address from then on.

I also discovered that editing /etc/resolv.conf to static name servers fixed the problem.

I'm running SuSE 9.1 and under that system, look under /etc/sysconfig/network, find the line which has
DHCLIENT_MODIFY_RESOLVE_CONF
and set that to "no"
You should make a copy of your /etc/resolv.conf since the next time I rebooted, it removed the resolve.conf and I had to manually restore it. Since then, all is fine.

Otis

quote: if [ "${USE_DHCP[$1]}" = "yes" ]; then # use DHCP to bring interface up if [ ! "${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]}" = "" ]; then echo "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]} eth${1}" | $LOGGER /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]} eth${1} else echo "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 eth${1}" | $LOGGER /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 eth${1} After each of your /sbin/dhcpcd lines...add a -R flag. This will make it so your resolve.conf will not be overwritten with the incorrect nameservers again. Reboot...and if all goes well, your resolve.conf file will stay correct, and you will now be able to browse without any problem .

this is EXCELLENT!!! the only problem i'm having is figuring out exactly where to put the -R flag? mostly because i can't seem to tell where one line ends and the next begins....

*edit...
found the answer...for anyone else who's confused, the -R goes after:

/sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 -h ${DHCP_HOSTNAME[$1]} eth${1} -R

and

/sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 10 eth${1} -R

once you reboot, you'll need to create the /etc/resolv.conf file manually...

I run Linux Fedora Core 2 (I haven't upgraded cause with crappy Qwest DSL it would take two years to download all the iso's). But on FC2 Web pages would hang or not load at all. Once in awhile Google's front page would come up but then nothing. I yanked the DSL router IP out of resolv.conf and it works great now. Thanks for your suggestions! I just thought maybe Linux and the Actiontec GT701 were incompatible. I'd almost given up hope!

I feel kinda silly it was this easy to fix. I was pretty sure it was all in the router too.

Well, I came across this thread because I too was having the dreaded Actiontec/Qwest problem with Linux. I started digging through the scripts a bit on my Fedora Core 3 box and found that the easiest solution is to add a line that reads:

PEERDNS=no

to the file /etc/sysconfig/network.

This didn't directly fix the problem, this is what prevents dhcpcd from overwriting your resolv.conf, at least on a FC3 box (and likely most other SVR5 init script type linux distros). I still had to manually create my resolv.conf as suggested.

The most ironic part of all of this is that the Actiontec GT701 RUNS LINUX!!!

Tubbs

I thank all of you for your questions and answers because I was stuck!!!!

I pinged both google and yahoo and the responses were fine.

I went to Firefox preferences and browsed for a possble setting.

I experimented by setting the connection setting to automatically detect proxy settings. TaDa!!

No problem connecting now!

Onward to setting up the VPN, but that's another issue altogether.

As an alternative, if you can't figure out where to add the -R flag and such, you could create two resolv files. resolv.conf (which is needed) and resolv2.conf, which will have the correct info in it..and then make a simple init script.

Put the correct values into resolv2.conf..and have it copied at every start up to resolv.conf

Just make a file with:

'cp /etc/resolv2.conf /etc/resolv'

and save it in /etc/init.d/ as resolv.sh , or whatever you want.

You could probably just put that command into rc.local as well.

I'm sure there's other ways to do it so that DHCPCD doesn't overwrite with wrong values, but these both work fine.

It's not a direct fix..but as far as I see...DHCPCD always gets the wrong values for this modem..but it works.