Thin client configuration problems

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007, DB Clinton wrote:

> > Okay but is there another dhcp server on that network?  That will
> > definitely cause problems.
> 
> I tried booting with nothing else running on the LAN with the same results.

Fair enough.  Do bear in mind though that once you get things running, you
should have only one dhcp server.

> > sudo tcpdump -i eth1 udp port 68 or port 67
 
> Here are those results:
> =====
> tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
> listening on eth1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 96 bytes
> =====
> Nother else showed up (even though I tried booting two separate clients).

Okay, so the dhcp request are not getting to the server.  This suggests
there is probably no physical link between them.  Incompatible ip addresses
wouldn't stop dhcp broadcasts getting across.

> > Okay, you need to look at the network I think.  Once you can set
> > compatible ip addresses and ping across the wires, then dhcp and
> > booting have some chance.
> 
> I should mention that this is already a fairly successful LAN linking
> various flavors of Windows (my WinXP server and a number of Win2K and
> Win98se boxes). The "thin clients" I want to use actually have Windows
> hard drives which I'd like to bypass with network boots to Ubuntu. 

So, can you boot windows and ping the linux machine?  I suspect not.  You
can do 

	sudo tcpdump -i eth1 icmp 

to spot ping packets arriving to eth1.

> Which means that, while I've had some connectivity issues over the years
> (and the two 98se boxes upstairs can conflict with each other from time
> to time causing some lost packets) the network architecture is basically
> sound.

Well, there's something wrong here.  It could be firestarter is blocking
things (you turned it off right?), but I think tcpdump as a raw socket user
would see things before the firewall blocked them.  

Make sure you have link lights on the network cards. Make sure you have
eth1 and eth0 plugged into the right networks (you can ping each
interface's own ip and watch the light flash to see which is which).

If you can't ping the linux machine from windows and see the icmp packets
on the tcpdump, I'd be inclined to say there's something wrong with the
network or something very strange wrong with the linux machine.

Gavin