New router killed my server

MasterC · 01-05-2003, 06:30 AM

Hello! First time poster, long time reader (in Networking).

I've been lucky enough to setup an FTP server, an HTTP server, obtain a DNS (is that right? I mean a name to associate with my IP for ease of use), setup and successfully use Postfix to send AND recieve emails to/from my single user box, setup an ssh server to use a win client to ssh into my box from work, and use all these with a Dynamic IP; all with little to no knowledge of general networking.

I guess my luck ran out.

I am getting ready to throw on a second box onto my home network. I purchased a Linksys BEFSR41 thinking it would make this addition a snap, I'd have my main box (the current one) as my workstation, it'd access the internet, and do my multimedia needs (video editing, oggs, pics, whatever) and the other box be my server (the functions listed in the first paragraph). Well things aren't going very snappy

I haven't connected the second box yet, I really wanted to see if I could get things rolling with one box before I threw in something else that I'd completely have to figure out things with (such as how to send email via the server box, etc).

So now onto my main question (any suggestions/ideas or thoughts on whatever I've said so far are very welcome):

How can I setup my computer to be the server it was before I added the router, just short of removing it

I don't even know where to begin to tell you guys any information you'll need, but I will be more than happy to provide anything you ask for, just tell me how to get it

I guess first off, I (normally) obtained my IP via DHCP, now I still use it, and my computers IP is: 192.168.1.100 which if I understand correctly is a dummy "internal" ip.

I thought I configured my router correctly and told it to allow the above listed protocols in/out and to forward the requests to this "internal" ip, but it doesn't seem to have worked. More than likely I'd guess I didn't set it up correctly, but who knows

I've read over the networking how-to( http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Networking-Overview-HOWTO.html )and to put it straight forward, there is just too much information there. I start reading it, and go blind with letters in less than 5 minutes. I am by no means putting it down, as it is VERY imformative. However the average bloke that would come along with little to no networking knowledge (me) wouldn't even know what half of the how-to is talking about, much less be able to apply it to their needs.

Thank you for ANY suggestions, anything at all. Even a point in a "more-geared-towards-idiots" how-to would be great.

I thank you all for anything you can provide me.

The networking idiot:
Chad

ScreeminChikin · 01-05-2003, 06:05 PM

So is your problem that you just cant access it from the outside world like you did before the router? Was your server just hooked directly into your cable/dsl modem before? If that it the case then I imagine your problem might just have to do with the firewall settings in the router. Before, your cable router would pretty much let anything through if its like mine. You said that you set the router to pass ftp, http etc. But if your router is like mine then you have to tell it which box on your network you want all the traffic to be directed to. You also said that you were using DHCP. That is fine for your workstations but I would set a static IP for your server like 192.168.1.10 or whatever, and Then set your DHCP address pool to 192.168.1.20-30 or howevwr you want there and that way when you tell the router to pass FTP traffic to 192.168.1.10 (the server), it will alays be at that address rather that jumping around because you have it getting an adress by DHCP. In reality, it probably wouldnt move too much depending on how you set your lease times but I would set it up like this to be on the safe side. The router will still be obtaining its "outside" address by DHCP from your ISP but thats it. And actually if you only have 2 or 3 machines you can set them all static but it really doesnt matter on the workstations one way or the other.

If I totally misunderstood the problem then please totally disreguard

MasterC · 01-05-2003, 06:08 PM

Sounds promising, I've gotten similar answers around, and my searches would seem to agree. Tonight I will test it out and report back tomorrow.

Thank you very much for the reply.

Cool

ScreeminChikin · 01-05-2003, 06:12 PM

I read your post again and I see that you said you did set the forwarding, I missed that. But I would check there first anyway.

MasterC · 01-05-2003, 06:24 PM

Yeah, I don't think I did it correctly. I forwarded ftp to port 22, http to 80, sendmail to both ports 25 and 110 but it appears to still not be working. Oh, and those ports were to the IP of the server. In case I am wrong, you can check to see if it's working:
ftp://masterc.no-ip.org OR
http://masterc.no-ip.org

Oh, and 1 more thing please

:
How do I set a static IP on Slack 8.1? I'd assume it's the same across the board, but I figure maybe not so I included my distro.

I am pretty sure I can shut off dhcpd in /etc/rc.d/ so I won't ask about that until I can't figure it out

Thanks again

ScreeminChikin · 01-05-2003, 06:39 PM

I dont know anything about slack but I think its the same for linux in general but I could be wrong.

#ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Im not real sure about where to set the default gateway in there maybe just add "default gw 192.168.1.1 or gateway 192.168.2.1" or something of that nature sounds reasonable but Im guessing. Also make sure that you set your static IP's out of the range of your DHCP pool.

MasterC · 01-06-2003, 12:12 AM

It appears that I cannot access it still. I will mess around with the settings a bit more tomorrow, and see if I can find out what I missed or did wrong.

If there are any other suggestions I'm still trying anything out. Thank you so far.

Cool

MasterC · 01-06-2003, 12:15 AM

Ahhh, now more bad things are happening that I hadn't thought of...

My Dynamic IP "changed" and so the IP updater updated to the new IP of the machine: 192.168.1.100

Oh no... That's not very good, and now I am not sure how I'd even make it get the real ip to update it?

This router is sure gonna teach me alot isn't it?

Cool

MasterC · 01-06-2003, 02:52 AM

In a Yoda voice "Learning much I am. Soon have answers will I"

This DNS stuff is nuts. I am having the hardest time understanding how I am going to get my Dynamic IP updated to my DNS provider.

Right now I have a program that runs on my box during bootup, it detects any changes in my IP and reports this to my DNS server (no-ip.com) and updates to reflect the new IP and keep my server flowing well (which it isn't yet, as you can see

). So now that the IP on the box isn't dynamic, but rather a static "internal" ip, how will I get the actual IP from the router, and then have that be transmitted to my DNS server (no-ip.com)?

Anyone with any ideas? This really wouldn't be a biggie, I could just remove the "update" program since it's not very often that my IP changes anyway, it's just the rare occasion that would really suck until I found out what happened.

Thanks for just listening to me complain about my server problems

If you've got some advice, I am truly open to ANY ideas (again, just short of removing the router... at this point anyway

)

Thanks

MasterC · 01-06-2003, 03:07 AM

Damn, after a while you can really start to pick through the how-to's to find what you need (it's really easy if you can also pick out the win-only info). It appears that some of the "update" tools for DynamicDNS/DynamicIP's include the option for:
http://dynamic.zoneedit.com/checkip.html
Which checks your actual connected IP and returns that to the server. Although I am very "confused" on how it would know when to do this (there's speak of IP change sensing, but how would that be done from the box with the static IP?), but we'll try it out before I question how well it works.

Anyway, once I get this "worked out" (or if I do) I will report back to let you all know how well it works, and how if it does. Here's what I am looking at to be the most promising option:
http://zoneclient.sourceforge.net/ (notice how I can set the script to check the above page

)

Here's some of the others I'll try if that one doesn't work too well:
http://burry.ca:4141/ddclient/ (this one sounds promising, but doesn't have "support" for my DynamicDNS site - no-ip.com)
(To be honest, I haven't even read over this site yet, just came up in my links I was opening to check out, but stopped after I found the zoneedit one

) http://www.dslwebserver.com/

Cool

ScreeminChikin · 01-06-2003, 08:15 AM

I have never tried anything like you are doing on a dynamic IP so I dont know exactly how that all works, but it makes sense that it should be able to detect your outside IP. All traffic coming from any box on your network will appear to be coming from that same outside IP to the outside world. Check out this page https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 click check my shields and it will show you your outside IP, so I would imagine that the dynamic IP client could do the same type of thing and then report those results to the DNS service.

MasterC · 01-07-2003, 03:05 AM

Thank you very much so far ScreeminChikin

Ok, so I got myself into more trouble today, and now am scramblin to get back, this is actually very interesting and if it weren't for the fact that my server is down, I'd take my time and learn it all.

As for the the IP, yes you are correct. The updater I use has already "fixed" it back, and I am guessing that it had switched it at some point that my router was down... anyway, the DNS problem is solved

For now anyway

Ok, so I attempted to give my computer (still on a single PC setup, so the single computer is both my server and my workstation) a static IP. I am pretty sure the IP went fine, however, I can no longer connect to the internet. I can still connect to the router, but not the internet. I used the command from above:
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
Changing it to meet my needs with:
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

So basically I only changed the IP

I am wondering if the other numbers, the netmask and broadcast number should come from/match to some number on my router. I've also set these values in my /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 script, along with my gateway (which should be the IP of the router?).

Anyway, so I also removed the dhcp and dhcpd packages that were installed during initial install.

And now, cannot connect. Any pointers or suggestions at this point are very much welcome.

Thank you

MasterC · 01-07-2003, 03:11 AM

Here is what sounds like an "unpromising" snippet from my router's manual on port fowarding:

Quote:

Port Range Forwarding sets up public services on your network, such as web
servers, ftp servers, email servers. or other specialized Internet applications.
(Specialized Internet applications are any applications that use Internet access
to perform functions such as videoconferencing or online gaming. Some
Internet applications may not require any forwarding.) When users send this
type of request to
your network via
the Internet, the
Router will forward
those
requests to the
appropriate PC.
Before using
Forwarding, the
Router’s DHCP
function must be
disabled under the
DHCP tab and the
Router must be
assigned a new
static LAN IP
address because
the IP address may
change when using
the DHCP server.

If you need to forward all ports to one PC, see the DMZ section.
To add a server using Port Range Forwarding:
1. Enter the name of the application in the appropriate Customized
Applications field.
2. Next to the name of the application, enter the number or range of the external
port(s) used by the server or Internet application in the Ext. Port column.
Check with the Internet application software documentation for more
information.
3. On the same line, select the protocol UDP or TCP, or select both protocols.
4. Enter the IP address of the server that you want the Internet users to be able
to access. To find the IP address, go to “Appendix F: Finding the MAC
Address and IP Address for Your Network Adapter.”
5. Check the Enable box to enable the services you have defined. Port Range
Forwarding will not function if the Enable button is left unchecked. This is
disabled (unchecked) by default.
6. Configure as many entries as needed—the Router supports up to 10 ranges
of ports. Click the Apply button and Continue button when you are done.

So does that mean I'll have to assign each PC a static IP? If that's all, whew! No problem, however if that means I cannot use port forwarding with a Dynamic WAN IP, <plug your ears> ^%#%@$#%^#!!!!

Any ideas

Cool

ScreeminChikin · 01-07-2003, 08:23 AM

Fret not little camper. I don't think that means that you cant use port forwarding with the dynamic IP. I think that your internet access problem might be a matter of gateway address. The machine was getting that from DHCP until you turned it of. I dont think it shows that when you do an ifconfig ,but if you know how to find it, just verify that it is set to the "inside" address of your router. A few questions...

1-what is the "inside" IP of your router and what do you have the netmask set to?

2-can you ping the routers inside address?

3-can you ping your other machine (do you have it hooked up yet)?

4-what port do you have you web server set to listen to, anyhing other than 80? (shouldnt make a difference in internet access, just for referance)

5-what do you have the DHCP pool on the router set at, or do you have it off all together?

MasterC · 01-07-2003, 08:05 PM

Thanks

1. I believe what the inside IP is: 192.168.1.1 (this is the IP I enter in my browser to configure the router, and it's the address assigned to the router on it's config screen). Here's a line from ifconfig:

Code:

inet addr:192.168.1.100  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

So I assume my netmask is: 255.255.255.0

2. I just switched back to DHCP to assign my server's generic IP (192.168.1.100) just to check to make sure I could still get on, and yes I can (as can be seen by my reply

) so, yes I can ping it currently and will try again when not using DHCP.

3. No I don't have it hooked up yet, I really was afraid it would complicate things so much more. I am believing the old saying "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time". So I am trying to tackle one problem before creating 50 more

If it would make things easier though, I will hook it up. Just let me know.

4. I have it set to listen to both 80 and 8800

5. I had it off, but couldn't connect. So now I have it set to start assigning IP's at 192.168.1.100 (should I change this?)

Thank you very much for your time and attention so far. (btw, have you heard about affero? I just checked so I could affero you, but it appears you don't have your username setup in your usercp.)

I do believe my problem does lie somewhere in my lack of knowledge/incorrect settings when I assign a static IP. I further believe it's in the Gateway, but just not sure what I should put there. I've tried: 192.168.1.1 which is the IP of my router. And I've tried the Gateway to my ISP 4.2.2.1 But neither one seems to work...

Thanks again

Cool