Mandrake - NT network ping trouble

[Gordon Michael]

I've got one computer running Windows 2000 and another one running Mandrake Linux 9.1, and they're connected via ethernet through a Netgear RP614 router. Both computers can ping the router and the Win2K computer can ping the MDK computer, but the MDK computer can't ping the Win2K computer even when the firewalls on both computers are deactivated. The Win2K computer is detected by EtherApe, as are the pings, both the successful ones from Win2K and the unsuccessful ones from MDK. Back before I wiped the old PC's hard drive and installed Mandrake on it, they could connect on the network fine, I'm not sure if pings worked properly or not back then, since I didn't have any reason to ping back then. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem?

BTW I've been using PCs for about a decade and doing all the software & hardware installation for at least 5 years, but I'm a complete newbie with regards to networking (since I only had one working computer at a time until recently) and Linux (got it last month).

[mychl]

Can other computers ping the w2k machine?

Are you pinging by ipaddress or hostname.

If by hostname, then you can put a line in /etc/hosts like

w2kname ip.of.w2k.box

I'm not sure if running samba will let you, but I know you can do some wins stuff with it... might help...

HTH

[DSwain]

Did you try configuring samba? obviously it seems you're on the net with it, so that's good. It seems like you may have to run samba configuration to make it work. Also, use LinNeighborhood- that's good software for mounting network drives.

[Gordon Michael]

<Can other computers ping the w2k machine?>
There's a third computer in the house, but the owner's out of the house right now, so I won't be able to check again for an hour or two. Last time it couldn't ping the Win2K machine, but I'm pretty sure the firewall (ZeroKnowledge Freedom) was on that time.

<Are you pinging by ipaddress or hostname.>
IP address.

<If by hostname, then you can put a line in /etc/hosts like w2kname ip.of.w2k.box>
Did it anyway to make future pings easier. By the way, there are two lines in there that read ...
10.0.0.10 linuxcomputername
127.0.0.1 localhost
Even though the Linux computer is not 10.0.0.10 and none of the LAN IP numbers begin with 127. Are the numbers supposed to be like that for some reason, or should I change them? Does windows have a cfg or ini file equivalent to /etc/hosts?

<I'm not sure if running samba will let you, but I know you can do some wins stuff with it... might help...>
I'm running Samba, and I can detect the shared folders on the Win2K computer with Komba, but I can't mount them.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Gordon Michael
IP address. Good. ;) Now -- are you sure the IPs are right? (sorry, dumb question, I know, but I've done stuff worse than that before...)

By the way, there are two lines in there that read ...
10.0.0.10 linuxcomputername
127.0.0.1 localhost
Even though the Linux computer is not 10.0.0.10 and none of the LAN IP numbers begin with 127. The fact that none of the LAN IP addresses start with 127 is a good thing. ;) The 127.x.x.x range is reserved for localhost -- any packet addressed to 127.x.x.x will never leave any machine that it gets generated on (the network layer will simulate a response locally). So if any LAN machine did actually have that address, nobody would really able to talk to it (they'd be talking to themselves), which is bad.

Now, the fact that the Linux machine's IP address is not supposed to be 10.0.0.10 is a bad thing, because it seems to think (at least according to the name resolution that it's trying to do) that its IP address actually is that. Did you run through any distro setup wizards when you did the network setup? Did you have them choose an IP address for you (I don't think any of them will do that, but you never know...)? What does /sbin/ifconfig -a say -- anything about eth0:9 by any chance?

Windows doesn't have a file like /etc/hosts (unless you count %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, if it even exists on your box, but that file is almost never used). It actually depends on broadcast-based name resolution (basically, it broadcasts to every machine on your LAN "Is anybody here named "bob"?" when you ask for the machine named "bob") most of the time. Unless you've set up a DNS server -- though it still might use broadcast resolution for local NetBIOS names (i.e. stuff that DNS won't resolve anyway).

[Gordon Michael]

<<Good. Now -- are you sure the IPs are right? (sorry, dumb question, I know, but I've done stuff worse than that before...)>>
Yep, I can connect to the router and get the IP addresses of all the attached devices.

<<The fact that none of the LAN IP addresses start with 127 is a good thing. The 127.x.x.x range is reserved for localhost -- any packet addressed to 127.x.x.x will never leave any machine that it gets generated on (the network layer will simulate a response locally).>>
Good, I thought localhost might've meant LAN gateway.

<<Now, the fact that the Linux machine's IP address is not supposed to be 10.0.0.10 is a bad thing, because it seems to think (at least according to the name resolution that it's trying to do) that its IP address actually is that. Did you run through any distro setup wizards when you did the network setup? Did you have them choose an IP address for you (I don't think any of them will do that, but you never know...)? What does /sbin/ifconfig -a say -- anything about eth0:9 by any chance?>>
In the network setup wizard I checked off the automatic IP box, so I'm thinking that 10.0.0.10 would be the IP address the computer wolud default to if, for some reason, the router did not automatically assign the computer an IP address. The ethernet controller is registered as eth0, but there's nothing about eth0:9 and no message.

This is what I get from /sbin/ifconfig -a

eth0
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr (MAC address)
inet addr:192.168.0.* Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
EtherTalk Phase 2 addr:65280/77
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
RX packets:2648 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:1302738 (1.2 Mb) TX bytes:317952 (310.5 Kb)

lo
(information on the local loopback omitted)

<<Windows doesn't have a file like /etc/hosts (unless you count %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, if it even exists on your box, but that file is almost never used).>>
Well it makes pings a bit simpler.

[motub]

Originally posted by Gordon Michael
By the way, there are two lines in there that read ...
10.0.0.10 linuxcomputername
127.0.0.1 localhost

Now, I'm not a networking guru, but isn't 10.0.0.10 the address of the router? At least, an address starting with 10.*.*.* is what the (software) router on the Win2k box that holds the internet connection on my network uses for the nic connected to the modem.

Why isn't there (and shouldn't there be) an IP of 192.168.*.* for linuxcomputername, to reflect the internal network connection?

[Gordon Michael]

The 3rd computer (running some version of Windows) pings the Linux computer successfully when the firewall is off, but the pings to the Win2k computer timout whether the firewall is enabled, disabled or not running at all. The Linux computer cannot send or respond to pings when its firewall (DrakFirewall) is on, while the Win2K computer can successfully ping the router, Linux computer and other Win computer regardless of its own firewall (ZeroKnowledge Freedom) settings.

[Gordon Michael]

I tried to reinstall the protocols & ethernet driver. That didn't fix anything, so I tried to uninstall the firewall, the uninstaller froze up, so I pretty much gave up & reinstalled windows, about an hour later, the ping worked fine, so the problem is solved, but I have no idea what caused it.

update:
I know what the cause was. It turns out Trend Micro's "PC-cillin AntiVirus" is really a virus scanner and firewall, I just added the LAN IP numbers to the trusted list.