Debian and Linksys Blue Box

I have several computers behind one of those Linksys
DSL Blue Boxes. This is a good way to set up a
business system on the interenet, because the blue
box is too simple to be hacked from the outside
world as I understand it.

Anyway I have Samba working on the network.
Using Samba the computers know each other by
name. But how does one give names to the Linux
computers behind the blue box? The blue box
uses dhcp to give the computers ip addresses but
that is it. You cannot specify which MAC address
gets which IP.

Earlier in a post in this newsgroup it was suggested
that one should not use dhcp with these blue
Linksys DSL switches. One should limit the
IP addresses available on the Linksys dhcp server
and use the addresses not available as static
addresses.

So I ran the command
apt-get remove dhcp-client

And then I could no longer connect to the internet.
OK, was this a mistake and if so what is the correct
method?

I tried various methods to get an internet connection
going at this point. After reboot Debian no longer set
up eth0, so I had to do this manually with ifconfig.

This would allow my internel network to work
properly but still no connection to the internet.
The route add command would not work(why did this
happen???? ) , and the
command netstat -rn showed that I had no routing
tables.

Finally, I gave up and ran the command

apt-get install dhcp-client

which thankfully worked with no connection to the
internet and I was up and running again with an
internet connection.

Does one need to use dhcp with one of these Linksys
Blue boxes?

If not, how do you get to the internet without it?

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Tom wrote:

> I have several computers behind one of those Linksys
> DSL Blue Boxes. This is a good way to set up a
> business system on the interenet, because the blue
> box is too simple to be hacked from the outside
> world as I understand it.
>
> Anyway I have Samba working on the network.
> Using Samba the computers know each other by
> name. But how does one give names to the Linux
> computers behind the blue box? The blue box
> uses dhcp to give the computers ip addresses but
> that is it. You cannot specify which MAC address
> gets which IP.
<snip>

I would suggest not to use the DHCP server of the linksys box.

Configure the linksys with static IP address in the linksys. Configure
DHCP server in the debian.

On the Debian DHCP server (well, actually, the ISC one), you can force a
specific IP address per MAC address.

If you want tips on configuring DHCP in Debian, just drop me a note.

--
Jean-Francois "Jef" Stenuit

"Jean-Francois Stenuit" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.58.0504260909400.22593@basement...
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Tom wrote:
>
> > I have several computers behind one of those Linksys
> > DSL Blue Boxes. This is a good way to set up a
> > business system on the interenet, because the blue
> > box is too simple to be hacked from the outside
> > world as I understand it.
> >
> > Anyway I have Samba working on the network.
> > Using Samba the computers know each other by
> > name. But how does one give names to the Linux
> > computers behind the blue box? The blue box
> > uses dhcp to give the computers ip addresses but
> > that is it. You cannot specify which MAC address
> > gets which IP.
> <snip>
>
> I would suggest not to use the DHCP server of the linksys box.
>
> Configure the linksys with static IP address in the linksys. Configure
> DHCP server in the debian.
>
> On the Debian DHCP server (well, actually, the ISC one), you can force a
> specific IP address per MAC address.
>
> If you want tips on configuring DHCP in Debian, just drop me a note.
>
> --
> Jean-Francois "Jef" Stenuit

Since there are windows boxes behind the Blue
Box, using this box as a DHCP server is much
preferred.

Further there is a business behind this box and using
the blue box as a dhcp server is by far the least
problematic.