PaulHowarth/Blog/2011-02-23

Wednesday 23rd February 2011

Fedora Project

  • Updated bluefish to 2.0.3 in Rawhide, F-15, F-14, F-13 and EPEL-6

Local Packages

  • Updated bluefish to 2.0.3 as per the Fedora version, reinstating the Fedora 9 build as the unintended requirement of gtk2 2.14 or later as been fixed upstream, and it now builds with gtk2 2.12 on Fedora 9 again

  • Updated curl to not ignore failure of SSL handshake (upstream commit 7aa2d10)

  • Updated perl-Coro to 5.372, dropping the State.xs syntax error patch, which was applied upstream (CPAN RT#65991):

    • Backport to windows process emulation code again

    • Fix some portability issues with Time::HiRes

  • Updated perl-Moose to 1.24:

    • Reverse the order that Moose::Exporter 'also' exports are dispatched

  • Updated perl-Text-Glob to 0.09:

    • Compiled documentation fixes

ADSL Switch to PPPoE

My ADSL line is due to be upgraded to FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) early next month and this will entail replacing my existing Speedtouch 546v6 router. The Telco (BT) will supply a DSL modem with an ethernet port for the router to connect to using PPPoE. My ISP (PlusNet) is providing a suitable Netgear wireless router with an ethernet WAN port but I don't want to use that as my setup has a Linux server acting as combined firewall/Internet server/router for the home network, using the Speedtouch router in PPTP over PPPoA transparent bridging mode, which I set up in April 2009. So my plan was to use the Linux box in place of the Netgear router and use PPPoE rather than PPTP/PPPoA to connect out. To minimise downtime on upgrade day, I thought it would be a good idea to switch over to using this mode now and get it all working so that it would be plug and play when the big day came.

I converted the Speedtouch router over to PPPoE mode as follows:

  • Shut down current Internet connection

  • telnet to Speedtouch router

  • Log in as Administrator (the default password is empty)

  • Disable the previously-enabled PPTP service: 

  • :service system modify name=PPTP state=disabled

  • Add an ATM interface and call it BrPPPoE_atm: 

  • :atm ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_atm

  • Get this ATM interface to use my pre-existing ATM phonebook configuration ADSL_PlusNet: 

  • :atm ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_atm dest=ADSL_PlusNet ulp=mac
  • Attach and enable this new ATM interface: 
  • :atm ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_atm

  • Add an ethernet bridge interface and call it BrPPPoE_br: 

  • :eth bridge ifadd intf=BrPPPoE_br

  • Configure the bridge to forward packets between itself and the BrPPPoE_atm interface: 

  • :eth bridge ifconfig intf=BrPPPoE_br dest=BrPPPoE_atm
  • Attach and enable this new ethernet bridge interface: 
  • :eth bridge ifattach intf=BrPPPoE_br
  • Save the configuration to the router so that it will survive a cold reboot: 
  • :saveall
  • Quit the router configuration session: 
  • :exit

This process was based on Roy Sindre Norangshol's guide at http://www.roysindre.no/a/2010/11/30/speedtouch-bridge/

At the Linux router box end, I made the following changes to my /etc/ppp/peers/plusnet file:

  • Drop the lock option, which is only relevant to serial/pseudo-serial interfaces

  • Enable the PPPoE plugin (at the top of the file): 
  • plugin rp-pppoe.so

  • Remove the pty "/usr/sbin/pptp 192.168.17.3 --nolaunchpppd" option that initiated the PPTP session and replace it with just eth0, the name of the WAN-side ethernet interface on the Linux router box

With that, my existing scripts were able to bring up and take down the Internet connection just as before.

Anybody setting this up from scratch might take a look at this post, which I found useful.

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