RE: [TCLUG:7110] more routing weirdness

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> I've determined that the default gateway is actually present in the
> routing table. The wierdness is that doing 'route -e' seemingly hangs, but
> after some time (1-2 min.), the printout is very long and includes many IP
> numbers that are completely unrelated to my little subnet on our WAN.
>
> If I remove the default gw from the table, then 'route -e' works
> perfectly. Recreating the default gw recreates the weirdness.
>
> Doing 'netstat -nr' is quick, but it doesn't show the default gw. A
> 'nestat -r' has the same behavior as 'route -e'

	'route -e' and 'netstat -r' are taking a long time because the system is
trying to resolve every IP address it finds to a name, and has to wait for
every search to time out.  I suspected that you wouldn't have DNS set up at
this stage of the game, which is why I suggested 'netstat -rn'.  'route -en'
should work similarly, I think.  In either one, the word "default" is
replaced by the dotted quad "0.0.0.0"
	I'm not totally sure from what you said whether removing the default
gateway is causing name resolution to get unbroken, or just timing out
faster.

> I did install both gated and routed, but I've since killed gated. Here's
> where I'm kind of clueless. I'm not sure which I should using. I've got a
> rather simple network here. Static routing is perfectly adequate.

	You don't need either one unless your Linux box is actually acting as a
router, directing traffic between two different subnets -- for example, if
you're using it as a firewall.  Otherwise, disable them both.  They could
very well be causing a lot of your troubles here.

	It sounds like you have a lot of education ahead of you...  You might want
to pick up a copy of "Running Linux", or, if you really feel like getting
hardcore fast, "TCP/IP Network Administration" (aka the Crab book), both by
O'Reilly.

---
Eric Hillman
CCCU -- UNIX Sysadmin
ehillman@cccu.com
The opinions expressed in this message are mine.  You can't have them.