HPNA2 gateway

[chall]

Has anyone tried to make a linux box gatway/router with a standard NIC to the cable modem (internet) and a HPNA2 card to all the local machines? This is what I'm trying to do, and seem to have the drivers (ftp://ftp.linksys.com/beta/linux_hpna2_0_v2_34_0_2.exe)
installed, but none of the HPNA cards seem to be able to talk. I have windows boxes that talked fine over the HPNA cards, but only this linux box NIC doesn't want to play, and therefore blocks all internet access.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

C

[ASCI Blue]

I've had this same problem before. The solution is simple (unless it's been updated) there is no HPNA 2 linux driver in existance for Broadcom chips. I see you're using a Linksys which uses said Broadcom chip. Best advice I can give you is to check out www.computersurplusoutlet.com (http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com) for a Diamond homefree PNA 1.0 card. Should run under $10 USD and it uses the AMD PCnet32 chip. I've got one in my rig now and it runs like a champ.

[chall]

You know, I actually have that card, and abandoned it because I have redhat 7.2, and PCnet32 only works with kernel 2.2. This is according to the AMD website. I've heard of people getting the broadcom chipset to work (no matter who the card manufactor) with the latest driver I pointed to, but only doing samba. I haven't heard of anyone who is using
a linux box with a HPNA card as a gateway to windows machines. I also heard of someone who actually dropped back to kernel 2.2 just to get the driver to work with the AMD chipset. I'm tempted, but it just seems like
I'm so close...

[ASCI Blue]

I can say from experience I've gotten the pcnet32 driver working in 2.4. The problem is you either have to have 2.2 or Windows to bring it up IF you shut the computer OFF. IF you just reboot after rebooting from a 2.2 or Windows partition you'll be fine.

If you DO know how to get the Broadcom chipset working I'd love some drivers. Last I checked, was about a year ago, and Broadcom and Intel were in court about something or other. That aside on a message board someone said that a broadcom driver for linux didn't look too bright.

[chall]

Originally posted by ASCI Blue:
<STRONG>I can say from experience I've gotten the pcnet32 driver working in 2.4. The problem is you either have to have 2.2 or Windows to bring it up IF you shut the computer OFF. IF you just reboot after rebooting from a 2.2 or Windows partition you'll be fine.

If you DO know how to get the Broadcom chipset working I'd love some drivers. Last I checked, was about a year ago, and Broadcom and Intel were in court about something or other. That aside on a message board someone said that a broadcom driver for linux didn't look too bright.</STRONG>

That's interesting about being able to bring up pcnet32 after a power down, I haven't seen that anywhere else, so that's good info. Sadly, my linux box is linux only (no dual booting), so I couldn't do that easily.

My good news is that I did finally get this setup working correctly. The link in my original post is good, and contains the source code to build the HPNA2.0 driver. It's a windows .exe though, so I had to copy the extracted files to a floppy, then copy to the linuxbox.
The driver (il.o) won't build unless you have the kernal source code on your linuxbox as well. I also had to manually change some paths in the makefile. But once built, copy il.o to the /lib/modules/(kernelver)/kernel/net directory. Then you should be able to modprobe il and it will be up to ping. To get the gateway functionality, you have to have valid ipchains or iptables rules setup, along with, of course the other NIC to the internet.
Rich McNeary has a very good site explaining how to bring the HPNA2 cards up at http://home.eznet.net/~rlmsmw/hpna/ He doesn't talk about the linuxbox being a gateway though.

Anyway, now I'm up, and loving HPNA2, because I was too cheap to go wireless, and to lazy to pull cat5 wire around my house. HPNA2, the cheap, lazy man's dream come true.

C

[ASCI Blue]

Woah..you are leetness incarnate. It'll be sad to see my trusty AMD nic go though. :(

[zentella]

I have a dual (more like multi) boot computer with Linux - Slackware 9.1 Kernel 2.4.24 , Windows 2000 and Windows 98. I use a built in Realtek RTL8139 10/100 to connect to my cable modem and a Diamond HomeFree PNA (AMD Chipset) card to connect to all other (4) Windows computers in the house. I can boot to either of the operating systems and my Diamond card will work everytime. No need to switch back and forth. All the other computer have total access to the internet and all other resources on either operating system. I made sure my booting is seemless to the rest of the network. (The only thing I cannot get to work is MSN Messenger on the network computers. It only works when I boot to Linux.)

I found a patch in the internet for the pcnet32.c file, I patched it and recompiled the module. It works everytime. I started with Kernel 2.4.19 and I have been able to upgrade to every kernal since. The patch is easy and it still allows the use of the card on ethernet mode. A simple "mode" option lets you select PNA or no option lets you use the ethernet (RJ45) connector.


If anyone is interested on the patch just reply to this post.