Arch Linux

bananabrain

Member

From: England

Registered: 2010-05-07

Posts: 78

problem connecting via wireless bridge

For some months my headless archlinux media server has been connected to my home network via a logitech squeezebox classic, like so:

media_server (wired) <---> (wired) squeezebox (wireless) <---> (wireless) gateway/router

This worked easily and instantly by simply configuring the squeezebox to bridge its ethernet port to wireless. No configuration was necessary on the server.

Now that I need to rebuild that server with a bigger disk, I assumed that I could do a clean build with the lastest arch install image. But no - eth0 on the server won't come up as it would if it was directly connected to the network. Can anyone tell me why?

I should say this isn't a show-stopper; I can run a 50m cat6 for the duration of the install process. I'm just curious about what's lacking in the install media to prevent me connecting to the internet via the squeezebox bridge when, as I said, no configuration at all was necessary to make this work on an already up and running machine.

Thanks for any insight into this.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,355

Re: problem connecting via wireless bridge

If I understand correctly, you have updated the media_server leaving everything else intact.

Is your network still called eth0?  Check with ip link.
Are you using static or dynamic addresses?  If dynamic, where is the dhcp server?
If it is static, how did you set your routes?  Is your static address in the same subnet as squeezebox and your router?
IPv4 or IPv6?

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bananabrain

Member

From: England

Registered: 2010-05-07

Posts: 78

Re: problem connecting via wireless bridge

Thanks for the quick reply, and apologies for the delay with mine.

To answer your questions:

Server interface configured as either enp2s0 or eth0 (with a softlink to /dev/null in /etc/udev/rules.d/) both result in failure.
Address is static with my router providing the dhcp service. I use a 27 bit mask which hasn't caused any problems to date.
IPv6 is disabled.

If I connect a cable to the server, its ethernet interface comes up fine; if I connect a cable to the Squeezebox Classic and run it wired, it works fine.

After much head scratching and arsing about, it turns out my squeezebox is failing to auto-bridge ethernet to wireless. I can only call it unholy bad luck that this failure has occured exactly when I swapped out the server hard drive for a rebuild - almost unbelievable in fact, but confirmed by swapping the Squeezebox Classic for my Squeezebox Boom in the bedroom, which bridges flawlessly as expected.

Since there's obviously nothing wrong with the physical ethernet connector on the Classic, I guess the fault must be somewhere in its software/firmware. Not really sure how to proceed now...

Thanks again for your time.