For a while my computer has had the annoying habit of rebooting whenever I tell it to shutdown. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? What it means is that I need to be present at the machine if I want to turn it off. I can’t tell it to turn off after midnight or after a hour of being idle (and forget suspend, that’s never worked right).
On and off for the past few weeks I’ve been crawling through the system logs and BIOS trying to find an ACPI error or other warning that would explain why the kernel feels like it needs to reboot. Then on a whim I turned off Wake On LAN.
I had turned on WOL because I thought it would be cool if I could turn on my computer from another computer, netbook, or mobile device before I go downstairs to use it. It turns out that WOL on this particular motherboard doesn’t work the same as other computers. Usually you need to send a magic packet to wake a computer up, but for some reason my computer wakes up with a simple ping or any other traffic sent to it’s address.
Turning off WOL did the trick, the computer actually shuts down when I tell it to shutdown. So, either there is some traffic from the network directed at my machine or the same flaw that makes the motherboard wakeup without a magic packet keeps it from powering down.
Posted by benjamen as Karmic Koala, Kubuntu, computer, linux, network at 9:30 AM UTC
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It was actually easy to configure XP to look up local names from the DNS server on my router. I did not need to bother with editing text files.
There is a place in the DD-WRT GUI where the LAN domain is set for DHCP. In the screenshot below, you can see under Administration-> Services, there is an entry for LAN Domain. Set it to a domain name of your choice. I chose localnet. Be sure to save your changes. I did not find it necessary to reboot the router.
On the XP side. Go to Control Panel-> Network Connections. Right click on the correct adapter and select properties. Then select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. On the General Tab there is an Advanced Button. This will bring you to a dialog where you can choose DNS Tab. Click on the radio button “Append these DNS suffixes (in order)” Then click the Add.. button. Add localnet to list. No rebooting necessary.
I’m sure there is an easier way to navigate to this buried dialog box, but that’s the way I navigated there.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as computer, linux, network at 4:57 PM UTC
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One of my motivating factors for installing the DD-WRT firmware was to keep track of my growing list of hosts. It is time consuming editing the hosts file on each computer. I know I can include a common host file, but I would need a common file server. I'm trying to reduce and consolidate the total number of services running across my network; I do not want to configure another service.
I set up the hosts file using the Static DCHP settings. I created and entry for each of my computers. I used a bogus MAC if I did not want to use DHCP with that computer. This worked well for my Linux boxes, but my XP box could not resolve the other computers on the network. After some digging, I found this FAQ. My answer lay in this question and answer:
Q: Names on the internet are working fine, but looking up local names
from /etc/hosts or DHCP doesn't seem to work.
A: Resolver code sometime does strange things when given names without
any dots in. Win2k and WinXP may not use the DNS at all and just
try and look up the name using WINS. On unix look at "options ndots:"
in "man resolv.conf" for details on this topic. Testing lookups
using "nslookup" or "dig" will work, but then attempting to run
"ping" will get a lookup failure, appending a dot to the end of the
hostname will fix things. (ie "ping myhost" fails, but "ping
myhost." works. The solution is to make sure that all your hosts
have a domain set ("domain" in resolv.conf, or set a domain in
your DHCP server, see below fr Windows XP and Mac OS X).
Any domain will do, but "localnet" is traditional. Now when you
resolve "myhost" the resolver will attempt to look up
"myhost.localnet" so you need to have dnsmasq reply to that name.
The way to do that is to include the domain in each name on
/etc/hosts and/or to use the –expand-hosts and –domain options.
My quick fix was to use the hostname. trick. Finding where DD-WRT creates the temporary file: resolve.dnsmasq is stopping me from setting a domain. There must be a script that looks at the web GUI settings and writes the resolve files. Otherwise, if I edit the resolve file, the changes will disappear on reset.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as computer, linux, network at 4:49 PM UTC
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I knew about hacking the WRT54G router at least three years ago. I bought one over 2 years ago with the intention of installing openwrt, but I kept stalling because there was no GUI. After reading this lifehacker article about dd-wrt a few months ago, I finally put reflashing my wrt54g on my to do list. Today I finally flashed new firmware.
Here's exactly what I did and why.
1) I found the serial number. It started with CDF5. From the chart on this page I found I have version 2.0 firmware. With version 2.0, I would not be limited in what I could flash.
2) I created a PDF of the dd-wrt wiki Installation page for when I was offline.
4) I downloaded the dd-wrt.v23_mini_generic.bin and dd-wrt.v23_generic.bin firmware from here.I made sure i chose v23 SP1. I also downloaded the mini firmware after reading the hwsupport.txt file:
3.) Linksys WRT54G/GS (any version) flashing notes:
—————————————————
-For upgrading from the original Linksys firmware, please use the generic mini version (dd-wrt.vXX_mini_generic.bin) and flash it from the web GUI interface. After this first flashing you can change to any other distribution, if you want.
-For flashing via the web GUI interface, always use the included 'generic' binaries. The other Linksys router specific binaries are only meant for tftp upgrades.
5) I unhooked my router from the network and connected it directly to my XP Box. The instructions said specifically to use internet explorer, because mozilla firefox has incompatibilities with firmware upgrading.
6) Thought the web interface, I reset the router to factory defaults
7) I had to change my XP machine to a 192.168.1.X network. I use a 10.0.x.X. network because of some legacy issues with my DSL modem. I was surprised that I did not have to reboot in XP. It was so stupid to be forced reboot when you changed your network address in previous windows versions.
8) Using the web interface, I flashed the mini generic firmware. I followed the dd-wt wiki instructions.
9) I waited 10 minutes before I touched anything, like the instructions warned.
10) The DD-WRT web interface came up so I reset to factory defaults again.
11) I flashed the standard firmware using the web interface.
12) After that finished, I reset the factory defaults again. I don't know if that step was necessary.
13) I reentered all my pertinent routing information
14) I reinstalled the router into my network and checked to make sure every machine could see the internet.
Posted by benjamenjohnson as computer, linux, network at 9:08 AM UTC
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Today I've been frustrated trying to get my Zaurus to connect to the internet through it's cradle using a XP network bridge. I could ping the XP machine, but I could not ping any other computer on my network or the internet for that matter. Networking on the XP machine worked just fine. After hours of searching I found this post: XP Network Bridge Problem
Basically at the command line type:
C:\>netsh bridge show adapter
———————————————————————-
ID AdapterFriendlyName ForceCompatibilityMode
———————————————————————-
1 Local Area Connection 2 enabled
2 Local Area Connection enabled
———————————————————————-
Note: the post didn't say how to find the adapter number so I changed adapter 2 first. After that didn't work I figured out the above command. That's why the output show both adapters in ForceCompatabilityMode
From the list pick the Adapter that isn't working and use the following command:
C:\>netsh bridge set adapter 1 forcecompatmode=enable
Worked like a charm.
Update! 7/19/2006
Evidently leaving the ForceCompatablilityMode enabled is bad for vmware's bridging mode. I couldn't see the network. So I had to turn it off for my XP box's connection.
netsh bridge set adapter 2 forcecompatmode=disable
So now when I type the command:
C:\>netsh bridge show adapter
———————————————————————-
ID AdapterFriendlyName ForceCompatibilityMode
———————————————————————-
1 Local Area Connection 2 enabled
2 Local Area Connection disabled
———————————————————————-
Posted by benjamenjohnson as linux, network, zaurus at 2:36 PM UTC
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