Suse router with three NICs

[rasputinnovgorod]

I've got my Suse 10 router working well with two network cards.
One card connects to the internet modem as an external card.

The other card connects to my computer. It is firewall configured
as an internal zone card and has a static IP. The DHCP server is
running and finds my personal computer (which doesn't
have a static IP); it all works.

I wanted to connect a second computer to the internet. Instead
of buying a switch, I though I'd just stick a third NIC in my
router. The card is successful installed, has it's own static IP, and
firewalled internal.

My problem is DHCP can't find my 2nd computer. I presume I must
configue DHCP for the third card? Do I need to add a second subnet for
the third (second internal) card?

Help!


Sincerely
/blair

[mikesd]

I wanted to connect a second computer to the internet. Instead
of buying a switch, I though I'd just stick a third NIC in my
router. The card is successful installed, has it's own static IP, and
firewalled internal.

My problem is DHCP can't find my 2nd computer. I presume I must
configue DHCP for the third card? Do I need to add a second subnet for
the third (second internal) card?

Help!


Sincerely
/blair

If it has a static IP, what does DHCP have to do with it? It shouldn't be assigning anything if it's a satic IP

[teknowill]

I think understand what you want:
example

eth0: internet
eth1: switch/something else
eth2: your primary PC

all devices connected to eth1 and eth2 get ip numbers from your suse dhcp and can see each other.

Summery
dhcp can only interface with -one- nic
therefore you need to make two nics look or work like one
add a bridge adapter ie. br0
give it the dhcp server address you setup before
set for example eth1 and eth2 to "No-IP" bonding device
add eth1 and eth2 to the bridge
tell dhcp to interface with br0

If you have kde suse 11.3 setup

yast > Network Devices > Network Settings
lower left
edit to be bridged interfaces to no-ip
add type bridge set ip
select bridged interfaces
Finish

yast > Network Devices > DHCP
lower right pull down interface configuration
select -only- br0

It should work now

-Bill

[rasputinnovgorod]

Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for. Except that my Suse 10.3
calls it bonding rather than bridging. I followed your instructions and
everything seems successful except that the two ports are extremely
slow and unstable. At first eth1 seemed fin, but later it became very slow.

I suspect it is an error in the bonding configuration. or else dhcp is
unhappy. Anyway, I try again tomorrow night...

Thank you for your suggestions!

Sincerely
/blair

[teknowill]

Hi Blair,

bonding or port trunking allows you to do one of 6 things none of which is a bridge. I can't give out urls yet....

look up:
Linux Bonding modes


In any case via bonding all ports on you dhcp server would need to go to one switch or server. hence the errors. The fault tolerance allows it to work at all, but it will never work well.

You will need to install the package "bridge-utils" before you can add a bridge.
Sorry, I didn't know it wasn't a part of the default installation or else I would have saved you some time.

There is a package description on novell's site. again can't do links yet

What to do:
---------------

• delete the bond0 interface

go to the terminal:

• su
• enter root's password
• yast -i bridge-utils

after it's installed, you might as well finish in the terminal

null the Ethernet cards:


ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0
ifconfig eth2 0.0.0.0

• Add a bridge, you can change br0, it's just a name
• add eth1 to it
• add eth2 to it
• see what happened

brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 eth1
brctl addif br0 eth2
brctl show

output:
-----------
bridge name-----bridge id---------STP enabled------interfaces
br0---------8000.00004c9f0bd2---------no-------------eth1
---------------------------------------------------------------eth2

now you need to give it an IP, what ever you used before, and turn it on


ifconfig br0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
ifconfig br0 up

don't forget to set the dhcp interface to br0


that should do it.

good luck,
-Bill

[rasputinnovgorod]

> bonding allows you to do one of 6 things none of which is a bridge.

Opps, stupid me. I couldn't find bond, but did find bridge. The docs
looked simular enough that I got fooled.

I have successfully installed bridge-utils and they work. I've also successfully
used brctl to create the br0 and link the ethx to it. 'brctl show' gives
successful output, and 'ifconfig' shows br0 as good. Problems:

1) This is all lost if I reboot. I presume I should put these commands in
a startup file? Which? Where?

2) My suse 10.3* YAST seems unaware of bridges, though it is aware of
bonds. After I build my bridge, Yast doesn't show br0 in Yast firewall,
network devices or dhpc. So I need to add br0 to the dhpc file directly?
(/etc/dhcpd.conf)?

3) Do I firewall eth1,eth2 etc; or firewall br0?

I am extremely grateful for your help. I couldn't have gotten my
router working as well as it does, without the genorosity of people
here. ... and I do RTFMs!

Sincerely
Blair

p.s. *I can't upgrade from suse 10.3, because my 3ware ATA Raid
9550sxu only has drivers for 10.3; or do you suppose they would
also work for 11.3?

[rasputinnovgorod]

> p.s. *I can't upgrade from suse 10.3, because my 3ware ATA Raid
> 9550sxu only has drivers for 10.3; or do you suppose they would
> also work for 11.3?

I'm upgrading to 11.3. The 3ware web page only had drivers for
my Raid card for 10.3. But 3 ware didn't say, it was because 11.x
kernal supported my raid natively...

/b

[rasputinnovgorod]

Also, I only have a couple of computers. Forget dhcp, I use direct
addressing; one less complication...

So all I need to know is how to make the bridge permanant.

/b

[rasputinnovgorod]

First, I want to thank everyone who helped me get this working.

I had some hardware upgrades since I started this a month ago:

Motherboard: two NIC's, 1 Gb
Intel PRO 1000 MT PCI-X Quad-Port Adapter, 1 Gb Lan NICs
(total of six NICs)
3ware ATA Raid 9550sxu 12 port sata

Problem: I couldn't get the raid or quad-NIC's to work. This is used
as a router, file server, dns, html server.

The quad nic didn't work because I didn't know about bridges
and bonds.

The Raid website only had drivers for 10.3; and I couldn't
get them to work. A query to 3ware gave me a new link
which told me that not only could I upgrade to SUSE 11.1;
it was preferable as the drivers where native. Once I fixed
some undocumented bios settings the raid worked.

The upgrade to 11.1 has bridge and bond native, with
very easy Yast install.

So now, I have the two motherboard NIC's bridged together
on a fallback connection to the internet. So if my cable
internet connection dies, my server automatically switches
to the other NIC connected to Bell intenet.

The four NICs on the quad card are bonded together
and connected to my computers, giving me 1Gb connections
everywhere direct server to client, eliminating switches.
I'm still refining the settings, have to RTFM to clean out some
bugs, but it mostly works and I'm pleased.

bond reference:
bridge | The Linux Foundation

Sincerely
/blair

[gogalthorp]

Good job..

The only downside I see is the 11.1 will no longer be supported in about 6 months

Current version is 11.3. So I don't know about those RAID drivers.