No ping broadcast response over small switch

[qwertygeek]

So I just changed my network card settings recently, and I'm now getting no response when I ping the broadcast address for them... the cards are all connected through a switch with IP addresses 192.168.0.x, broadcast 192.168.0.255... ifconfig on all of them shows UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST, but nobody responds to a broadcast packet. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Pinging each machine individually works fine.

[scathefire]

can the other machines broadcast?

[qwertygeek]

can the other machines broadcast?

They don't get any responses either. The packets ARE getting through as far as I can tell because the activity lights on the cards flash in sync when I start broadcasting. Something just seems to be set up to discard / ignore them. Not sure what though..

[scathefire]

well its really up to the OS as to whether or not it will actually respond to a direct broadcast. the switch, as long as it has no intelligence, will pass broadcasts.

check this file to see if its set to ignore:

cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

if its 1, then its disabled change to 0 and it will respond

[qwertygeek]

Right.. and the fact that the activity lights on all the NICs should indicate that they're at least being received, right? Just something somewhere in Linux is instructing it not to reply because it's a broadcast?

[scathefire]

check the file i mentioned, yes they are received, but its being ignored if that is set to 1

[qwertygeek]

Ugh, I actually stumbled across that online a few minutes ago but it didn't exist on my F10 box so I assumed it was a non-Fedora thing. It exists on the FC5 box back there, but I can't edit the file.. trying to write it fails (as root, of course).

[qwertygeek]

SOLUTION:

1. As root, echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts

- OR -

2. As root/sudo, add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf: net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 0


Thanks for the help scathefire