🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Virding (rv@erix.ericsson.se) wrote:

: Can anyone point me in the direction to some documentation for the
: dummy net device driver? I have found a reference in the NET-2 howto
: and in the source code but neither tells you how to use it.

Following on from this, I have a problem that _may_ be solved by the
dummy driver.

Currently my machine name (dreamtim.demon.co.uk) has an IP address assigned
to it by my IP provider - this being my SLIP port. At the moment this is
my actual machine hostname, aswell as the entry in "hosts" for my SLIP IP
address. The problem I am having is in routing - I cannot use talk locally,
as I get this error:
[Couldn't bind to control socket : Cannot assign requested address (99)]
Also, I have the CERN httpd (v3), which looks for "dreamtim.demon.co.uk".

Both of these (and possibly other) problems seem due to the fact that they
cannot "see" the SLIP interface when it is not up. I compiled the
dummy i/f driver into my kernel, and issued the following command:
ifconfig dummy xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 
(where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of my SLIP port), but it still
had the same problems (I assume because "dummy" does not transmit packets ...
so how does it help in routing?). Someone mentioned to me that "dummy" had
to be taken down before the SLIP link could be set up. If this is so (sounds
fair enough), how can I "up" it again automatically when the SLIP link goes?

My alternatives are either to change the hostname of my machine (which would
mean I would have to re-setup Sendmail and INN, and possibly other things,
that I would rather leave for a bit), or put the dreamtim.demon.co.uk IP
address as my ethernet port (the problem with this being "talk" gets
confused when trying to talk to an Internet machine, and tells the other
in.talkd the IP address of dreamtim.demon.co.uk that I have in my hosts file.
This means that I cannot get a talk session).

Any help (or other ideas) would be greatly appreciated.

Ivan
-- 
Ivan Beveridge <iab@dreamtim.demon.co.uk>