Two Weeks Already?
It almost doesn't seem that long since I updated last, but time does fly...
I'd like to say that my principle entertainment recently has been playing SWG, but it's almost taken a back seat to once again trying to sort out my dialup connection. Since rebuilding my PC, yet another strange quirk appeared - The cheap PCI modem, which I had obtained as a workaround for the mysterious 'zero bandwidth' problem that appeared after I first installed XP, suddenly itself started exhibiting a very similar problem. This time, however, it didn't just drop to near-zero bandwidth every few seconds or so... No, this time the line just drops completely after an average of maybe two minutes. Sometimes (rarely) it lasts as long as ten minutes, sometimes it only lasts ten seconds. It was bad.
So, as yet another workaround, I got hold of a nice cheap USB modem, at least partly as another test. Dabs could do them fairly cheaply, after all. So, I plug that in, and after a couple of minor installation hassles (it turns out that not all modem cables are created equal) it connected, and remained connected for more than two minutes. So far so good...
...But then, the next quirk appeared. The USB modem would connect tolerably well, but it too suffered wildly fluctuating bandwidth (not to the extent that the original serial modem did, but it was observable whilst playing MMORPGs), and - more unusually - it would only work once per reboot. Upon trying to dial up a second time, even if it was a redial attempt after the line dropped, the connection operation jammed on 'Opening port...' and never came back. Whatever subsystem was controlling the external connections would freeze, to the extent that the entire Windows shutdown procedure would not complete. It was one whole reset-button situation. So, since playing SWG with a flakey network connection was really wearing, Plan Z had to be implemented. With the laptop set up for Internet Connection Sharing, the network connection was stable - But, of course, this was still sub-optimal. Clearly, the preferred solution would be to set up a Linux box as the DHCP server, and have it dial out...
...And this turned out to be actually quite painful. Especially with Debian. At time of writing: The DHCP server works, but setting it up seems to have disabled X, and I haven't yet worked out how to get it back. I can dial out just fine, but only as root, despite having put myself in the dialout group (something to do with the permissions on one of the options files, I think). The Windows machines on the network can see each other in Network Neighbourhood, but can't see the Samba shares on the Linux box, and frankly the whole internal network is sometimes a little slow now (possibly because I'm not actually running a DNS? Everything uses the hosts files, and Demon's IP addresses forwarded by dhcpd). And the IP Masquerading works... But Turnpike won't receive mail. It can send it just fine, and it can receive news, but I haven't yet seen it collect mail. It's possible that this is an internal configuration thing - The 'External Connection' option doesn't dial, so it might only be stuck in 'browse' mode, which might just have a really long time interval before it collects, but if so, it's longer than I've yet been prepared to leave it.
But at least it sort of works. More experimentation on the weekend.
In other news, the Escaflowne box set has now shipped, and I have the fourth disc of Inu Yasha, which is good... (Out of order, subjectively mirrored, and occasionally kind of censored compared to the Manga. But still very good. :)
I'd like to say that my principle entertainment recently has been playing SWG, but it's almost taken a back seat to once again trying to sort out my dialup connection. Since rebuilding my PC, yet another strange quirk appeared - The cheap PCI modem, which I had obtained as a workaround for the mysterious 'zero bandwidth' problem that appeared after I first installed XP, suddenly itself started exhibiting a very similar problem. This time, however, it didn't just drop to near-zero bandwidth every few seconds or so... No, this time the line just drops completely after an average of maybe two minutes. Sometimes (rarely) it lasts as long as ten minutes, sometimes it only lasts ten seconds. It was bad.
So, as yet another workaround, I got hold of a nice cheap USB modem, at least partly as another test. Dabs could do them fairly cheaply, after all. So, I plug that in, and after a couple of minor installation hassles (it turns out that not all modem cables are created equal) it connected, and remained connected for more than two minutes. So far so good...
...But then, the next quirk appeared. The USB modem would connect tolerably well, but it too suffered wildly fluctuating bandwidth (not to the extent that the original serial modem did, but it was observable whilst playing MMORPGs), and - more unusually - it would only work once per reboot. Upon trying to dial up a second time, even if it was a redial attempt after the line dropped, the connection operation jammed on 'Opening port...' and never came back. Whatever subsystem was controlling the external connections would freeze, to the extent that the entire Windows shutdown procedure would not complete. It was one whole reset-button situation. So, since playing SWG with a flakey network connection was really wearing, Plan Z had to be implemented. With the laptop set up for Internet Connection Sharing, the network connection was stable - But, of course, this was still sub-optimal. Clearly, the preferred solution would be to set up a Linux box as the DHCP server, and have it dial out...
...And this turned out to be actually quite painful. Especially with Debian. At time of writing: The DHCP server works, but setting it up seems to have disabled X, and I haven't yet worked out how to get it back. I can dial out just fine, but only as root, despite having put myself in the dialout group (something to do with the permissions on one of the options files, I think). The Windows machines on the network can see each other in Network Neighbourhood, but can't see the Samba shares on the Linux box, and frankly the whole internal network is sometimes a little slow now (possibly because I'm not actually running a DNS? Everything uses the hosts files, and Demon's IP addresses forwarded by dhcpd). And the IP Masquerading works... But Turnpike won't receive mail. It can send it just fine, and it can receive news, but I haven't yet seen it collect mail. It's possible that this is an internal configuration thing - The 'External Connection' option doesn't dial, so it might only be stuck in 'browse' mode, which might just have a really long time interval before it collects, but if so, it's longer than I've yet been prepared to leave it.
But at least it sort of works. More experimentation on the weekend.
In other news, the Escaflowne box set has now shipped, and I have the fourth disc of Inu Yasha, which is good... (Out of order, subjectively mirrored, and occasionally kind of censored compared to the Manga. But still very good. :)