IPX problems

[Igor B. Bykhalo]

From: "Malcolm Kay" <malcolm.kay at internode.on.net>
To: "Free BSD Questions list" <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 4:53 PM
Subject: IPX problems


> I wiish to retire a rather aging Linux box which has been providing 
> (amongst other things) access to a Novell file server.
> 
> The new box has has FreeBSD 4.8 installed and I have recompiled 
> the kernel with:
>   options "IPX"
>   options "NCP"

Is NCP useful for IPX? Just asking, i'm not sure...

> 
> And appended to rc.conf
>   ifconfig_rl0_ipx="ipx 0x0000001B" 
>   ipxgateway_enable="YES" 
>   ipxrouted_enable="YES"

Well, i have IPX configured on lo0 also, but i'm running mars_nwe.
(See http://people.freebsd.org/~bp/ipxen.html. It's a bit outdated, but still useful.)

> 
> rl0 is also configured for an inet address and ifconfog reports
>  rl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>         inet 192.1.3.230 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.1.3.255
>         inet6 fe80::250:fcff:fea8:3e08%rl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 
>         ipx 1b.50fca83e08 
>         ether 00:50:fc:a8:3e:08
>         media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
>         status: active

Is the Ethernet frame on Novell server ETHERNET_II?
If not, you need to add support for Ethernet frames via kernel config (see LINT)
or via kldload if_ef AND configure IPX for particular frame in rc.conf

I have:

goshik# ifconfig -a
sis0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet XXX.YYY.ZZZ.235 netmask 0xffffffc0 broadcast XXX.YYY.ZZZ.255
        ether 00:a0:cc:a1:c3:71
        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
        status: active
sis0f0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ipx bbbb0000.a0cca1c371
        ether 00:a0:cc:a1:c3:71
sis0f1: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 00:a0:cc:a1:c3:71
sis0f2: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 00:a0:cc:a1:c3:71
sis0f3: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 00:a0:cc:a1:c3:71
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
        ipx aaaa0000.1H
goshik#

Here sis0f* are clones of sis0 for particular frames,
so in your case these will be rl0f0, rl0f1, etc.

The corresponding settings in rc.conf:

network_interfaces="sis0 sis0f0 lo0"
ifconfig_sis0="inet XXX.YYY.ZZZ.235 netmask 255.255.255.192"
ifconfig_sis0f0_ipx="ipx 0xbbbb0000"
ifconfig_lo0_ipx="ipx 0xaaaa0000.1"

ipxgateway_enable="YES"        # Set to YES to enable IPX routing.
ipxrouted_enable="YES"         # Set to YES to run the IPX routing daemon.
ipxrouted_flags="-s"           # Flags for IPX routing daemon.

> 
> The problem is that I have not been able to get any of the utilities to find 
> the server:
> 
> central:202> ipxping PHILHEND
> ipxping: could not find server PHILHEND
> : syserr = Network is down
> 
> central:203> ncplist s
> Can't find any file server
> 
> Am I doing something stupid?
> Am I overlooking something?
> 
> Can anyone please help or suggest how I might proceed?

Check the above mentioned items... :-) BTW, why didn't you
just try mount_nwfs?

HTH,
Igor

> 
> Malcolm Kay