This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 13:32:20 -0800
Quoting Reynolds Cameron (loudspin@yahoo.com):
> My understanding of the original question, as it
> relates to me, at least, is how make AT&T Broadband
> Internet (formerly @Home) functional on Linux.
[...]
> For W2k environments, the new instructions (since changeover from
> @Home) are to delete your COMPUTER_NAME and change your WORKGROUP to
> "ATTBI". They will not allow any IPs for the host, dns, etc to be
> static any longer.
>
> HOW does this translate to SUCCESSFULLY :) setting up a network/client
> running linux client?
The new WORKGROUP instructions aren't really relevant: They concern
CIFS/SMB host naming, which is one of Microsoft's alternatives to DNS.
You would care about that only if running CIFS/SMB software such as
smbclient -- and only _after_ getting your DHCP lease and DNS
information.
Vijay Ramachandran's original post asked: "I tried my old setting,
i.e., using my machine name and domain assigned by @home, but this works
sometimes and does not work other times with Att broadband - for
instance, the ip address I obtained this morning seemed ok, but the
netmask looked weird - 255.255.255.192?"
It seemed that Vijay's only problem was that this netmask looked wierd
to him. So, I explained that it was/is perfectly normal.
As long as bandwidth providers don't interpose needless obstacles, such
as requiring PPPoE or requiring that customer devices' ethernet ports be
pre-registered with the DHCP server, it should suffice to just start
one's local DHCP client (either dhcpcd or pump). That has the effect of
running ifconfig to assign an IP address ("leased") to your ethernet
device, running route to add a default route back to the bandwidth
provider, and adding some lines to /etc/resolv.conf to configure your
local DNS client.
===
From: Vijay Ramachandran <vijay@zambeel.com>
To: balug-talk@balug.org
Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] Re: att broadband settings?
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 16:40:29 -0800 (PST)
I am not sure what was wrong with my networking settings at the time I had the
connectivity problems, but it seems to have been resolved.
I am now able to connect using dhcpcd. It looks like ATT allows any hostname,
and send back the settings in reply to the dhcp request, i.e., the hostname is
the one you sent, and the domain is attbi.com. So the @home computer name is
not necessary.
I wish I knew what the original problem was, esp. since the netmask I thought
was wrong was shown to be valid.
===
To: balug-talk@balug.org
From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] Re: att broadband settings?
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 17:16:30 -0800
Quoting Vijay Ramachandran (vijay@zambeel.com):
> I am now able to connect using dhcpcd. It looks like ATT allows any
> hostname, and send back the settings in reply to the dhcp request,
> i.e., the hostname is the one you sent, and the domain is attbi.com.
> So the @home computer name is not necessary.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "hostname" in this context.
You can have put names you want for the local machine in your /etc/hosts
static-lookup table (especially effective if you make them resolve to
the loopback address). If that's what you're referring to, then your
bandwidth provider doesn't know what you put there (or have any reason
to care).
===
To: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
From: Vijay Ramachandran <vijay@zambeel.com>
Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] Re: att broadband settings?
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 17:39:37 -0800 (PST)
Previously, @home supplied a name to your machine, like c456123-c. This needed
to be supplied to the dhcp request (-h flag, and as has been pointed out, as
"DHCPNAME=c17blahblahblah-a" entry in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/eth0). That is no longer needed when using ATT
broadband.
===
To: balug-talk@balug.org
From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] Re: att broadband settings?
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 18:15:55 -0800
Quoting Vijay Ramachandran (vijay@zambeel.com):
> Previously, @home supplied a name to your machine, like c456123-c.
> This needed to be supplied to the dhcp request (-h flag, and as has
> been pointed out, as "DHCPNAME=c17blahblahblah-a" entry in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/eth0).
Ah.
The information need not technically be a hostname, but rather may be
any string the DHCP daemon operator requires that a specific client
machine provide with each lease request. But yes, I see, now, what
you're referring to. (It's the same option flag in both the dhcpcd and
pump clients.)
===
From: Marc MERLIN <marc@merlins.org>
To: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Cc: balug-talk@balug.org
Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] Re: att broadband settings?
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 14:42:44 +0100
On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 06:15:55PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Vijay Ramachandran (vijay@zambeel.com):
>
> > Previously, @home supplied a name to your machine, like c456123-c.
> > This needed to be supplied to the dhcp request (-h flag, and as has
> > been pointed out, as "DHCPNAME=c17blahblahblah-a" entry in
> > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/eth0).
>
> Ah.
>
> The information need not technically be a hostname, but rather may be
> any string the DHCP daemon operator requires that a specific client
Correct, although windows sends the hostname and there's no way to have it
send anything else :-)
On linux obviously, you can send anything you please.
===