Hi Michele, > I have this problem too and it's due (in my case) to the lan hardware > (Alcatel OmniSwitch/Router). > If the Linux box (all versions MDK and RH) doesn't make any traffic the > switch will not know the linux IP address so the Linux box won't be > assigned to any VLAN, consequently it will not be pingable from > any machine > (neither from inside the switch). > The workaround was to make the linux box do some pings scheduled > as a cron > job (as another person says in this same message, below). > One good practice was , too, to put in the switching hardware an > ARP table > entry for the IP address of the linux box setting it to be permanent and > published (so it's always "active" and "visible" on the lan). > And, I've discovered recently, the same thing is to be done on the linux > box with the command ARP. > example: > > arp -i eth0 -s "your ip address" "your mac address" > > to have the ip associated permanently to the mac address > > arp -i eth0 -s "your ip address" "your mac address" pub > > to have it also published > > So the linux box will know "better" what mac address is bound to what > interface. > I know , it should already know, but -always- if the linux box has two or > more nics, in the ARP cache table of the switch I found the right ip > address of the linux box associated with the WRONG mac address! > So the switch did forward the right traffic to the WRONG linux nic. > > That's my experience. > > Of course these are all workarounds, if there's someone that knows how to > fix it (almost) permanently, please do! (don't know, maybe fiddling in > /proc/net there's a parameter to fix this...just a guess) >
Thanks for this info. Always nice to know you're not alone. For the time being it seems that having a static entry in laptop's arp cache is sufficient. Cheers, ::mark
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