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OT: ADSL T-Bar?
by Mark Rogers 03 Nov '09

03 Nov '09

One of our customers has been advised that something called a "t-bar" (phonetic spelling, I or he may have misheard and I've probably mis-spelled otherwise anyway) will improve his ADSL connection. Professor Google hasn't helped me work out what he is being told, does anyone here know? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Are there any good iptable routing configuration utilities out there?
by Chris G 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

I've been Googling around for a while and can't find any good utilities (command line or GUI, don't mind too much) for configuring iptables routing. Part of the trouble is that 'iptables configuration' mostly means firewall set up and I don't want/need to do that as it's in my ADSL router. What I want is to configure routing tables in a Linux 'server' box on my network. It *may* be that some of the firewall utilities will do what I want but it's difficult to penetrate the mass of information about firewall set up. I think Smoothwall can probably do what I want but is possibly overkill. Quagga maybe too but it is definitely overkill, I don't have complex requirements, just slightly non-standard ones. There are sites like http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html which tell you how to do some of what I want but they're very old and I wonder if they're still the right way to do things. They're mostly four or five years old and the kernel and routing have probably moved on somewhat since then. They don't really handle failover either. -- Chris Green

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Youtube stops buffering
by Barry Samuels 30 Oct '09

30 Oct '09

Debian Testing with kernel 2.6.26 Flah version 10.0.32.18 My wife uses Iceweasel to access youtube and she discovered that recently when she tries to play something it starts to buffer the stream but after a very short while the buffering stops. When the play indicator reaches the end of the buffer mark it stops and won't play any more. She also uses BBC iPlayer but that doesn't give any problems. Can anyone nudge me in the right direction in trying to diagnose this? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Routing/port forwarding question
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

If I set up a 'router' box which does connection sharing with something like the following in its routing:- ip route add default scop global \ nexthop via 192.168.0.2 dev eth0 weight1 \ nexthop via 192.168.0.3 dev eth0 weight1 (two ADSL modems/routers on 192.168.0/24 with approximately equal speed) Then how do I deal with SSL, incoming SMTP and similar which require that, once started, the 'session' continues to use the same interface? Is there a routing syntax that allows one to specify a port number which would override the above for specific port numbers? -- Chris Green

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USB error messages in syslog - what do they mean?
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

I have just tried connecting my 2Wire 2700HGV router to my ubuntu 9.04 linux system using USB. This produces the following in syslog:- Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230365.857016] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 Oct 26 23:12:34 chris kernel: [230366.039734] usb 6-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.219736] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.468009] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x00010202) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708062] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: RNDIS_MSG_QUERY(0x01010101) failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.708067] rndis_host 6-2:1.0: rndis get ethaddr, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709680] rndis_host: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.709713] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968010] rndis_wlan 6-2:1.0: RNDIS init failed, -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968036] rndis_wlan: probe of 6-2:1.0 failed with error -110 Oct 26 23:12:35 chris kernel: [230366.968064] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan Is this an error (as in a bug in the Linux code) or is it just that the USB code in Linux doesn't know how to talk to the router? -- Chris Green

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USB to Ethernet - works!
by Chris G 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

Well my new, cheap, generic USB to ethernet dongle 'just works', excellent! It was about a fiver from Lambdatek (along with some other stuff to avoid carriage being too significant). It's branded "Dynamode" USB-NIC-1427-100 if anyone is interested. It means I can add extra NICs to my little Acer Aspire Revo to my heart's content, I only need the one for the moment. By the way I have Ubuntu Server 9.10 (last release candidate) installed on the Revo, went without a hitch. I tried xubuntu but that fell in a heap, I suspect the display drivers are not fully up to it yet and, as I don't really need X, I just went for the server installation. Next to configure it to actually start doing useful things so I can turn my desktop machine off when I'm not using it and the rest of our little network will continue to be happy. -- Chris Green

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Searching a web host for possible exploits
by Mark Rogers 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

In the past I've used a little script here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=92678 .. to scan my virtual hosts for any exploits that might have been uploaded (eg any PHP Shells, etc). It's quite a simple but effective script (just searching for keywords and emailing the offending section of code to me to investigate) but it isn't maintained and there's probably better tools out there. My question is: what tools do other people use/recommend? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Naive Wireless LAN question(s)
by Chris G 27 Oct '09

27 Oct '09

Up until now I have avoided using Wireless LANs as far as possible, I find wired ethernet much easier to understand and get my head around. We have occasionally turned on the Wireless on the router to allow my wife's laptop to connect when she's out in the garden but have always turned it off again after use. I now want/need to do something a bit more difficult and really don't quite know how wireless will handle it (or even if it can). I'll try and explain what I want to do. I have two phone lines each with ADSL from two different ISPs. Currently it's all hard wired with a Draytek Vigor 2820n on one and a BT Business Hub (2Wire) on the other. The 2820n provides simple load balancing sharing requests between its ADSL and the BT/2Wire ADSL which is connected to the second WAN port on the 2820n. What I want to do is do load balancing/sharing in a Linux 'server' box rather than using the 2820n as the 2820n's load balancing is a bit limited and I think that (maybe) I can do better using something like Zeroshell or Smoothwall in a dedicated Linux box. I'm aiming to try using an Acer Aspire Revo as the 'server' box but it only has one wired ethernet NIC (as do nearly all reasonably priced low power boxes) so I'll need to use its wireless LAN too. I'd like to use its hardwired Gigabit interface to connect to my existing LAN with our desktop machines, NAS etc. So, I want to use the wireless LAN on the Acer Aspire Revo to talk to both the routers, is this possible? I.e. will they all talk together in the same way as they would if plugged into a switch? Or would I be better off getting the Revo to talk to one of the routers using wireless and then use the switch in that router to get the other router onto the same subnet? Any all advice welcome (if anyone has waded through this so far!). -- Chris Green

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And now for something completely different - an iPlayer problem
by Barry Samuels 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

I'm having a BBC iPlayer problem. If I try to access content, using Iceweasel, I get a message "This content doesn't seem to be working" but my wife can access the same content from her computer connected to the same router. We are running the same versions of Debian and Iceweasel. I do have Flash enabled and I can access the ITV and Channel Four equivalents with problems. Any ideas? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Any experience of USB to ethernet converters with Linux?
by Chris G 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

Has anyone here used a USB to Ethernet converter with Linux? I want to add a second ethernet interface to an Acer Aspire Revo and the most obvious way to do it is to use a USB to ethernet thingy. Will it 'just work' or are there issues? A quick Google search suggests that I should have no problems but it would be good to have specific recommendations if anyone has any. -- Chris Green

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