[H-GEN] DHCP and Telstra

[Paul Gearon]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

Hi all,

Is anyone out there running Bigpond cable?

Yesterday Telstra took the service down due to "problems with Motorola
cable modems logging in".  Not sure why as I have a Motorola modem, and
I've always been fine.

When they came back up I've discovered that at least one of my Linux boxes
can no longer obtain an address by DHCP.  After much frustration I used
the sledgehammer approach, and got an address with a Windows 98 box, and
then configured the Linux box to use that IP address permanently.

I know this is a BAD THING (TM) and I'm really keen to figure out the
problem before Telstra decides to give the lease to someone else and I
have to do it again.  (I figure it's just luck that I'm stil up and
running happily).

Now I haven't had a lot of time on this, so I don't know if other versions
of the DHCP client will work yet.  The sticking point is that the Linux
box in question is actually a SnapGear SOHO+ (and I've let them know about
the problem), so it will be a pain to change the DHCP client, but
certainly not impossible.

So does anyone know what is going on?  I figure that Telstra changed to a
new version of Windows... one that changed the DHCP protocol enough to
still work with Windows clients, but not work with Linux clients (or at
least, my version of the client).  I *think* that the dhcp client is
dhcpcd-1.3, but it doesn't tell me on the command line.

Regards,
Paul

Paul Gearon


--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/