Re: [LARTC] Rip problems

[James Sneeringer <james+lartc@vincentsystems.com>]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 01:46:37PM -0400, Joseph Watson wrote:
| EXPORT_GATEWAY="no"
| SILENT="no"

This should cause the equivalent of "routed -s" to be run.  The "-s" tells
routed to send routing updates.  Check with "ps ax".  You can get further
debugging out of it with "-d" and "-t".

|   When I start routed, the appropriate routes show up in the portmaster after 
| about a 30 seconds, and all works good for about 2 1/2 minutes.  Then the 
| portmaster sets the Metric to 16 for the route to my subnet behind the 
| firewall, and routing quits working.

PortMasters do this when they think they need to remove the route from the
routing table.  They set the "O" flag (for obsolete, I guess) and set the
metric to 16 (because 16 is the largest metric permitted by RIPv1).  The
route will eventually disappear from the table unless another update is
received.

| If I restart routed, we will repeat the 
| process.  If I stop routed during the 2 1/2 mins, it will immediately set the 
| Met to 16.  This tells me that they are communicating because when I shut 
| routed down the metric is set to 16.  But why does this happen exactly at 2 
| 1/2 min??  I am quite confused?

It sounds like routed isn't sending routing updates.  RIPv1 sends the whole
routing table every 30 seconds to the broadcast address (which is why it
takes about 30 seconds for the PortMaster to see the routes).  My guess is
it's only sending out the initial announcement, and when the PM doesn't see
subsequent announcements for a couple minutes, it drops the routes.

If possible, consider using OSPF instead.  RIPv1 is quite obsolete and
generally useless on subnetted networks like yours.  PortMasters have done
OSPF since ComOS 3.5, and you can implement it on Linux with zebra or gated.
For further PortMaster-specific help, consider subscribing to the
portmaster-users@portmasters.com list.  See http://www.portmasters.com/
for more info.

-James

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