Baselayout and RC_AUTO_INTERFACE

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

I've searched quite extensively on how to customize conf.d/net to fit my purpose, that is to have wireless (eth1) activated only when lan (eth0) is unplugged, as well as disabling eth1 as soon as eth0 is plugged again, on a laptop. I've both the interfaces set on dhcp with static fallback addresses/routes (by the way, both settings are the same for the two ifaces, as they should never be up at the same time on my home lan/wlan, and this way I only have to open p2p ports on my router only once and it'll work always, no matter which iface of the two is going to be up).

Now, I've found out I have to _delete_ the ifplugd initscript from every runlevel, and _add_ net.ethX, but this way both the ifaces would get started as I see no way to tell baselayout which one to prioritize in conf.d/net, or am i missing some 'hidden' logic ?

I've also found out two other clues:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-298712.html - which suggests playing with ifplugd.action

and RC_AUTO_INTERFACE, which some people on this forum were told to set to yes in conf.d/rc until April, but not later, and as I use 1.12.1 baselayout (last version in portage) and this variable is not there (nor are any related comments).

So I guess RC_AUTO_INTERFACE is gone, but no clue if its functionality is implicitly on or available.

So what should I do ?

UberLord · Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 6:43 pm Post subject:

Right the RC_AUTO_INTERFACE variable was dropped a while ago.

You just need baselayout-1.12, latest netplug/ifplugd, wpa_supplicant-0.5.x and resolvconf-gentoo.

The magic should just happen - your wireless will have a higher metric than your wired, which means your wired will be preferreed.
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j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

So it seems my configuration should be ok as it is, but still, do you mean I need to have net.eth0 and net.eth1 _both_ added to default runlevel ? Because if I grasp it, this way both the ifaces are up and have an address, only metric makes magic (routing) happen; but, if so, there's no way to avoid wireless to keep scanning or whatever ? Even more important: is there no risk to have loops or other mad packets around, if my network, as you can imagine, will see two ifaces up with the same address (192.168.200.16), so same subnet too (.200.x), even if one connects to an AP (.200.19), and another to a AP-linked switch ?

Also, I forgot to mention I have problems with resolvconf, as I have emerge --config'ured and the symlink is there, but there's no output with resolvconf -l.
And even in this case it seems I should simply put dns_servers="x.y.z.k" or dns_servers_ethX in case I want behavior to be set per iface. But here it doesn't seem to work (I have to admit I still have to try out on my first question as I have problems with bcm43xx). From my understanding the settings in the conf.d/net should make for the missing files one should manually set for every iface inside /etc/resolvconf/ (in a certain sense, as unneeded as ifplugd settings taken from conf.d/ifplugd are). Still it doesn't work (file is "# generated by resolvconf", but nothing more than that comment).

I take advantage of my question to sort two other related things out: what about ppp ? I mean I want ppp connections to replace dns info too. Do I need to take some steps (as there's obviously no static dns servers for my ppp0/1/2, so no dns_* entries for them altogether) ?

And, may I enable static dns for ethX, once it works I mean, _only_ after dhcpcd fails, so that dhcp may hand them dns info if active on the lan ? Because I don't know if it's correct/supported to write something like fallback_dns_servers= (for both) or fallback_dns_servers_eth0= (if I want fine-grained control).

Thanks in advance for everybody's patience.

UberLord · Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:31 am Post subject:

mrness · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:17 am Post subject:

UberLord · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:04 am Post subject:

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

In the wait to see my wireless working (this has nothing to do with baselayout, but with kernel module support), I can confirm you that I know see what happens 'behind the curtains', thanks to your words; maybe someone should better document these features, as lots of them are automagic behavior and quite a lot different from previous versions.

Nevertheless I still have issues with resolvconf-gentoo:

Dr.Dran · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:19 pm Post subject:

@UberLord ehm excuse me but when do you plan to make the baselayout 1.12.x stable?

Best regards

Franco
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UberLord · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:46 pm Post subject:

UberLord · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject:

Dr.Dran · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

UberLord · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject:

Dr.Dran · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:02 pm Post subject:

That's ok, eh eh eh for the moment there isn't a real problem, I mount the interface on hand.

Thanx for the good job

Cheers

Franco
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:: [Dr.Dran] Details ::
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- IT FreeLance Consultant
- President of ImoLUG [Imola & Faenza Linux User Group]

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 7:06 am Post subject:

As I said, that's correct behaviour, the fallback stuff isn't that great for what you need.

Try this. You would probably need to change the ip of the static gateway to match your own, but it should work

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

Ok, now I'm trying to take steps according to your last suggestion (btw, 1- now I see the point in arping, even if I wonder if it's possible to swap priorities this way - i.e. dhcp + arping as a fallback; 2- I think I can grasp dns_servers behavior, as 'system'-wide, not as a fallback, so at last I see an _urgent_ need for someone more 'in the know' than I am - otherwise I'd try it out myself - to put a _good_ sticky or gentoo-wiki alike, or even a few cases in the net.example, so that this improved automation doesn't get lost for most of the users trying to figure out what happens).

But my list of problems is never empty; now I have the same settings as above, only gateways is suffixed once for eth0 and once for eth1 (and both have same gateway), while config/routes/dns_servers entries are not duplicated, as they refer to one gateway only. Just for the record I've uninstalled ifplugd and installed netplug, as I noticed it's the default when both are on the system, and I have iproute2 on, as I try to stay as much as possible on common ground.

The problem is: with or without netplug (!plug) on, it fails to give any address or route, other than 127.0.0.1 (btw it writes 127.0.0.1 on the resolv too).
It seems arping does not work right atm. It says, with !plug, 'Pinging blah blah' then indented there is the address of the gateway alone, and it fails (!!), then it tries out dhcp which is bound to fail as there's no dhcp around here. How can I troubleshoot ? I put RC_VERBOSE on yes, but there's no other info on what it fails on... It seems to me arping_address_exists is the point where it spits out the error, giving a glance at arping.sh; is there a log of what happens in the background ? (btw, tail -f /var/log/messages and dmesg give me no hint).

Thanks in advance ! I hope not to be too n00b, but I'm used to try to find out a way out myself (and RTFM) when I can (just look at my post count, and it's 4 months Gentoo - and Linux in general as well - keeps me busy

)

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 12:56 pm Post subject:

Please post the contents of

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 2:10 pm Post subject:

Post the output of the following

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject:

j0m · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 12

I've tried also installing arping2 and trying (it has a similar syntax), nevertheless it doesn't work; still everything works on the lan if I put the various ip addr / ip route / resolv.conf by hand.

Also, there's no firewall on the lan, the router works behind 2 switches (I've tried lessening by one hop the ethernet path by linking the router on the same switch as my computer).

Don't know what else should I look for (hardware failure at the MAC layer ?!?)

PS: of course I tried rebooting both router, switch and laptop

beatryder · Veteran Joined: 08 Apr 2005 Posts: 1138

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:33 pm Post subject:

UberLord · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:37 pm Post subject: