SOHO Network Management

Monday, May 25, 2009

Debian / Ubuntu Linux Setting a Default Gateway

This article is not written by me, the credit goes to the author who wrote this.
Q. How do I setup a default gateway on Debian or Ubuntu Linux? My router IP is 192.168.1.254 and I'd like to setup this as a default gateway for Debian Linux.
A. You can use command line tool such as
a] ip command - show / manipulate routing, devices, policy routing and tunnels
b] route command - show / manipulate the IP routing table
c] Save routing information to a configuration file so that after reboot you get same default gateway.

ip command to set a default router to 192.168.1.254

Login as the root and type:
# ip route add default via 192.168.1.254
OR
$ sudo ip route add default via 192.168.1.254

route command to set a default router to 192.168.1.254

Save routing information to a configuration file /etc/network/interfaces

Open /etc/network/interfaces file
# vi /etc/network/interfaces
OR
$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
Find eth0 or desired network interface and add following option
gateway 192.168.1.254
Save and close the file. Restart networking:
# /etc/init.d/networking restart
OR
$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Source : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-debian-ubutnu-set-default-gateway-ipaddress/

Unable to ping from Terminal but able to browse using firefox?

Q: Unable to ping from terminal but able to browse the internet with browsers ?

Symptoms :
ping 192.168.1.1 ----- works

ping google.com
connect : Network is unreachable

traceroute -n www.google.com
traceroute to www.google.com (66.102.9.147), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
connect: Network is unreachable.

netstat -nr
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
10.51.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0

Ans : The system does not have a default route.

to add a default route:

route add default gw 192.168.1.x (where x is the ip of the gateway)

For more information on adding a default route to the system read this

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Add pidgin PPA to sources list to upgrade pidgin with update manager

Ubuntu ships Pidgin but does not update it after a release (except for security issues). For those users who desire new releases of Pidgin, we have packaged Pidgin in a PPA. If you encounter problems with these packages, try building from source and report the bug.
To setup the PPA, copy-and-paste these commands into a terminal:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 67265eb522bdd6b1c69e66ed7fb8bee0a1f19asdf6a8 /etc/lsb-release

echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu $DISTRIB_CODENAME main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pidgin-ppa.list

Once this PPA is setup, Pidgin updates will show up in Update Manager along with the usual Ubuntu updates. The PPA will need to be re-setup only after upgrading Ubuntu.