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Interesting Problem

Discussion in 'Tarifa Firmware' started by Outer Marker, Jul 27, 2008.

  1. Outer Marker New Member

    I am using Tarifa version 32. Two weeks ago my ISP switched me from PPPoE to DHCP configuration. When I was on PPPoE configuration, I had my WRT54G do the PPPoE authentication for me... I had no software installed on my PC for PPPoE. Now I have confugured the WRT54G for DHCP since my ISP no longer supports the old way. I did a complete reset of the WRT54G to delete nvram of any old settings. Then I set it up with Tarifa 32 and DHCP.

    The problem is, every 3rd day, the router is no longer able to connect to the Internet. When I look at the status page, I see that the router is disconnected. I use the buttons on the router status page to renew DHCP... nothing, all zeros. If I reboot the router, it all works again!

    I asked my ISP what is special about 3 days, and they say that their DHCP leases are set for three days under DHCP config. Is this a bug in Tarifa 32? I wanted to downgrade to Tarifa 31 to see if the issue goes away, but can you tell me how to safely flash the router with 31? Can I just flash with 31, or do I need to do a hard reset of the router?

    Thanks in advance!

    -- Outer Marker
    Outer Marker, Jul 27, 2008
    #1

  2. jchuit LI Guru

    This is indeed an interesting problem, but to get more info you need to enable syslogd. If this is enabled the router will make a log file in tmp/var/log/messages. This log file can be opened with telnet (first enable it on the router).

    I must say, that I did see this problem before. Maybe it is some kind of bug in udhcpc, this udhcpd(c) package is very old and very difficult to debug.
    A newer package is available in Busybox (UDHCPD 0.9.9), but to inplement this a lot has to be changed and tested. (Maybe this is the way to go....)

    All Tarifa version do use the same UDHCPD package (0.9.8+broadcom patched+static leases).

    Restarting processes is originaly done by the KillAll program, if you hit DHCP renew the client should get a new ip adress, but the program isn't killed and the same for DHCP release.
    jchuit, Jul 28, 2008
    #2

  3. Outer Marker New Member

    Thank you very much for your prompt reply. I will turn on syslog this evening to see if any more information can be gathered for this issue.

    If UDHCPD 0.9.9 is the way to go, I would be happy to assist you in testing. However, if we need to implement a workaround for the future, I was thinking of a script to automatically reboot the router at night, every couple days. What would such a script look like, and where would I enter it? In the startup script section is my guess, but I am not sure of the syntax.

    Thanks for your excellent support of such an elegant firmware.
    Outer Marker, Jul 28, 2008
    #3

  4. Outer Marker New Member

    I think I found the answer to this problem. When I was using PPPoE, my router MTU was set to 1492. When I was switched to DHCP by my ISP, I used "Auto" which defaults to 1500. Today my Internet connection again dropped.

    Just for fun, I changed my router MTU back to 1492. I didn't even have to reboot the router, things just started working again right after I saved the new MTU value. After some further Internet research, some users are suggesting a lower MTU value is best for DHCP.
    Outer Marker, Aug 2, 2008
    #4

  5. jchuit LI Guru

    Improved renew and release.

    One cause could be, that is some situations a SIGUSR1 followed by a SIGTERM, the udhcpd and udhcpc process crashes.
    This could happen after a release and renew of the ip adress.

    Now in Tarifa 033 udhcpc and udhcpd services are stopped by a script, that kills the process by Process ID.
    jchuit, Aug 4, 2008
    #5

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