To further support my claim that the 7.2 installer (today from
sunsite.uio.no) is not ready for confident use, let's look at the
network configuration I have:
1. A Fast PCI LAN with each machine with one fast network card. All
LAN adapters come in as eth0. No DHCP, /etc/hosts and
/etc/resolv.conf the same on all machines. That is the simplest kind
of network.
2. The gateway machine on this LAN has an additional network card,
this time a PCI slow 10Mb/sec one, connecting to a cable modem (these
are limited to 10 Mb/sec). The cable modem has a fixed IP from the
vendor, so no DHCP is needed. This comes through as eth1 so as to
preserve the convention that the LAN NIC is eth0 on all machines.
Again, very simple.
3. The gateway machines has ipchains rules, all for eth1, which MASQ
traffic from the other LAN machines arriving via eth0.
So how does DrakX handle setup for this configuration?
a. Network install gives me about 5 choices. I choose cable modem.
DrakX asks me to choose between the two NICs, but it has them mixed
up - it labels eth0 as the NIC with the tulip driver and eth1 as the
NIC with the ne2000pci driver. That's quite wrong. See note below.
b. Nevertheless, I choose eth1 (the slow ne2000 clone). It neglects
to ask me whether I want DHCP or not, assumes yes and installs an
unwanted DHCP RPM. It then lets me set up with my assigned cable IP,
offers me one slot that somehow I must fit the two DNS IPs into (?),
and I input the netmask.
c. It then brings up a dialog for the other NIC, the fast eth0
(which is not related to the cable modem in any way - who ever heard
of a cable modem requiring two NICs?) with the cable modem entries
prefilled. This is quite wrong - cancel.
d. Network configuration again. Choose LAN. It gives me no choice
of adapter to bind to. I fill in the slots, erasing the incorrectly
prefilled DNS slot. It asks for the gateway IP - when it itself is
the gateway!!!
Of course the total upshot of this nonsense is no networking or
internet access via the cable modem. Linuxconf also is useless. I
have to setup networking by hand, which actually is easier than going
through all the above.
-----
This is the "Note below": The kernel seems to assign which adaptor
gets eth0 and eth1 by a set of unknown rules. It presumably
remembers the eth assignment by persistent storage of the adaptors
unique manufacturer-assigned hex number, since if you move it to
another PCI slot it retains this eth number. The kernel does not
recognise any NICs beyond two (very strange!).
AFAIK you can only force a particular adaptor to be eth0 by a piece
of trickery, as follows:
Power down and remove all NICs.
Boot up Linux and power down again.
Insert the NIC you want to be eth0 in any PCI slot.
Boot up, and Linux will assign it eth0.
Power down and insert the other NIC in any PCI slot.
Boot up and it will be eth1.
Repair/recreate/edit the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
and ifcfg-eth1 files so that they tell the truth.
Of course such trickery cannot be used by DrakX, so there exists a
real problem.
--
Regards,
Ron. [AU]
