[Server-devel] WvDial, Networking Issues in XS 0.6/0.7

Jerry Vonau jvonau at shaw.ca
Sun Mar 18 12:34:51 EDT 2012


On Sun, 2012-03-18 at 09:05 -0500, Sameer Verma wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Shaun Pickford
> <shaun.pickford at gmail.com> wrote:
> > OLPC Community,
> >
> > Building off of the previous email I sent this morning, I want to present
> > our situation to you very briefly and see if anyone can provide some
> > guidance. We have a team in Haiti and some of us behind in the States. Our
> > team in Haiti is coming back on Monday, and would really like to set up an
> > XS and get it running and sharing an internet connection before they leave.
> > We have a FitPC with XS 0.7 and a 3G card that is used for internet
> > connected via USB. The goal is to share that internet connection over a
> > wireless network that XOs and other laptops can connect to. We've identified
> > that we need wvdial to do this (unless someone can point us in the direction
> > of something else that is on the XS 0.7 build, as it doesn't appear our
> > internet is working). In the email I sent this morning, we mentioned that
> > when we do a yum install for wvdial, we get an error that it could not
> > resolve the host. We've done pretty extensive searching on this, and it
> > appears that the computer is simply not connecting to the internet (or at
> > least that's what I think is the issue...I could be wrong). I set up a
> > Virtual Machine on my computer (I'm in the states) and installed XS 0.6 on
> > the VM. There were no connectivity issues with the internet, and when I ran
> > a yum installer for wvdial, it performed an update to Fedora, then told me
> > that wvdial was already installed. I also setup a VM with XS 0.7 (matching
> > the environment of the FitPC in Haiti), and experienced the exact same
> > issues with no Internet connectivity and no ability to perform the yum
> > install of wvdial (same error message). I worked with the 0.7 VM for hours
> > today (important to note I'm very new to Linux), but to no avail. It's
> > interesting that the 0.6 VM had no issues whatsoever.
> > Ultimately, my question is...is there something we're missing on 0.7 that we
> > need to make everything work? We've gone through the setup and configuration
> > outlined in the XS documentation, and all we're trying to do is a simple yum
> > install of wvdial. Another question is, do we need wvdial for what we want
> > to do? Or is there something else we can use? Should we just wipe the FitPC
> > and install XS 0.6, based on the success we had with the Virtual Machine?
> >
> > Thanks in advance, and I appreciate timely repsonses by anyone, as the team
> > is coming back to the states on Monday.
> > --
> > Shaun Pickford
> > shaun.pickford at gmail.com
> > www.shaunpickford.com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Server-devel mailing list
> > Server-devel at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
> >
> 
> 
> On the 0.7, once you are done with the installation, the primary
> Ethernet port (eth0) which acted as a WAN connection during
> installation becomes a LAN connection after the reboot. eth0 now
> becomes ready to serve IP addresses to XOs. To get to the Internet
> (WAN) you will need a second ethernet port (we use a USB-to-Ethernet
> adapter in Jamaica). That second port becomes WAN. In your case, the
> Natcom device could become the WAN, except that you don't have wvdial
> to make it work. To get wvdial, you need some way to get the RPMs from
> the Internet.
> 
> One option that I can think of (not tested) is the use the xs-swapnics
> script and swap your WAN <->LAN so you get access to the internet
> temporarily via eth0. Once you are able to isntall the required RPMs,
> run xs-swapnics again and switch back to eth0=LAN and Natcom=WAN.
> 
> I haven't tested this, but maybe others can chime in.
> 

That should work if your provider is using dhcp.

Think we could step though this, what would be helpful is a copy of
/var/log/messages, while plugging the modem in, to have a look at.
Your going to have to install vwdial, and maybe libwvstreams, lockdev,
usb_modeswitch if these are not already installed, offline via usbkey
and using rpm at the command prompt. Or do you have a way to get the XS
on the internet without the usb-modem? 

Jerry



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