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FAQ 

Network Administration

How do I setup NAT to work over PPP?
How do I setup NAT to work with a cable modem?
How do I setup NAT to work with DSL?
Why doesn't nslookup work?
Miscellaneous Dial-up/PPP Notes
How do I get my Airport working?
How do I setup multiple IP addresses?
Why do I have to reboot whenever I make a network change?
How do you get multiple NICs working?
How to I set up Netinfo to mount my server (Apple Share IP) at the Network Icon?
Does SOCKS work?
Why doesn't ftpd support -S?
I'd like to add a cheap AppleShare server to my network. How can Unix help me do this?
How do I setup NAT to work over PPP?

Wayne Folta sent in a great report on setting up NAT over PPP.

How do I setup NAT to work with a cable modem?

Marco Wessel followed that up with a report on setting up NAT with a cable modem.

How do I setup NAT to work with DSL?

DrJayT sent in a report on configuring MacOS X as an ADSL software router.

Also, Jonathan Baumgartner sent in the following:

Got it. Had to do some serious hunting, but here's the link. OS X is now working as a software router, allowing my PC to connect to the internet with the same IP address.

Very, very cool. :)

http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Forum33/HTML/000133.html

Why doesn't nslookup work?

Justin Walker, who is purported to be much learned in such things, sheds some light on this in an email he sent this weekend. (He also wins the "Coolest Job Title of the Year" award, hands down :-)

Note that command-line nslookup still works okay if you give a working DNS server as the second argument, ie:

nslookup zieg.com 207.229.143.1

Miscellaneous Dial-up/PPP Notes

Why the /var/run/resolv.conf? It's different from the BSD that I used to know, but it makes sense to me that /var/run is where stuff appears while a program is running. For example, fire off PPP Connect and magically /var/run/resolv.conf appears and since /etc/resolv.conf is a symbolic link to it, the contents are magically there. If it did not work this way, you might naively edit resolv.conf only to have it clobbered when PPP Connect came up.

As a side note, I've done a little poking into the whole PPP thing. It appears that PPP Connect eventually calls an Apple pppd, which in turn fires off the UNIX pppd. Somewhere along the way, the ppp extension gets loaded into the kernel as well.

My biggest question is: is there any possible way to get Classic apps to work over a PPP connection? Evidently, if you talk nicely you can get Classic apps to work over Ethernet. But seeing as I only have dialup access, that's not much help.

Contributed by Wayne Folta

How do I get my Airport working?

Tai Kahn sent in this great tip, culled from MacNN.com: 


    As root do

    $ mkdir /System/Library/Extensions/AirPort.kext
    $ vi /System/Library/Extensions/AirPort.kext/Info-macos.xml

    and type/paste in:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">
    <plist version="0.9">
        <dict>
            <key>Date</key>
            <string>March 17, 2000</string>
            <key>Name</key>
            <string>com.apple.AirPort</string>
            <key>Personality</key>
            <dict>
                <key>IOClass</key>
                <string>AirPortDriver</string>   
                <key>IONameMatch</key>
                <array>
                    <string>radio</string>
                </array>
                <key>IOProviderClass</key>
                <string>AppleMacIODevice</string>
                <key>Name</key>
                <string>AppleAirPort</string>
            </dict>
            <key>Vendor</key>
            <string>Apple Computer, Inc.</string>
            <key>Version</key>
            <string>0.1</string>
        </dict>
    </plist>

    ...reboot and the airport card will show up as a ethernet device. you can
    give it an ip addr or have it go dhcp/bootp.
Note that Matt Watson at Apple warns that this approch has its risks:

You may send or receive corrupt or incomplete data from FTP, HTTP, SMTP, POP or IMAP connections. This may cause higher layer applications in the system to crash or otherwise behave badly. Your PowerBook's battery may drain at an alarming rate. Your disk may become corrupted and you may need to completely re-install your system software.
Paul Rickards followed up with this question, to which I don't have an answer myself:
I do have a puzzling question though. The AirPor trick does indeed work fine. The problem I'm having is how do you switch to another AirPort base station? The software with OS 9 under Classic refuses to work.

I've tried rebooting into OS 9 and switching to the new base station without luck.

Paul's follow-up:
Well, I've come to the conclusion that the AirPort drivers will automatically choose a base station at start-up. I'm not sure how it behaves when there are two or more base stations. I'm also curious to know why it didn't prompt for a password for the base station.

Joe Block conveniently wraps up many AirPort configuration issues into his installer package (email him directly with any questions or problems).

How do I setup multiple IP addresses?

Multiple IPs work. Let's say your current IP address is 207.241.100.150, and you want to add a second address of 207.241.100.152. Try a command such as this: 
sudo ifconfig en0 inet 207.241.100.152 netmask 255.255.255.255 broadcast 207.241.100.255 alias
(That's all one line)
You need to do: ifconfig -a (or something similiar) first to determine what your Ethernet device is. Mine is en0.

Be VERY careful if doing this remotely. A typo can result in your box not being on the net anymore.

If you want the second IP to be added automatically every time you reboot, edit /etc/iftab, and add the above line almost verbatim to iftab. For instance, my /etc/iftab now reads like this: 

	lo0 inet    127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0 up
	en0 inet    207.229.146.240 netmask 255.255.255.192 up
	en0 inet    207.229.146.251 netmask 255.255.255.255 broadcast 207.229.146.255 alias

Contributed by Tracy Snell
Michael Wise followed up with this:
tutorial on how to do it for MacOS X Server is at:

http://kapu.net/macosx/secondary.html

The applicable directory for MacOS X Public Beta is:

/System/Library/StartupItems/

Which contains directories for each of the relevant services, and inside each, a "batch" file, but what the order is of execution, I'm not yet sure. Also, check out the comments in /etc/rc.

# Customize system startup by adding scripts to the startup
# directory, rather than editing this file.

Seems that it calls /sbin/SystemStarter to process the directory.

My guess is, create a directory in the /System/Library/StartupItems/, put the batch file in, *AND* the parameter file, just like the others, and it should be good2go. I'll test it shortly.

Aloha mai Nai`a!

Why do I have to reboot when I make a network change?

Why, indeed? You don't, as Tai Kahn explains in his report (thanks also to Timothy Hatcher and MOSR.com).

How do I get multiple NICs working?

Just curious about an issue that you or one of your readers might know - how does OS-X PB handle more than one network interface? I've got a couple of ethernet cards around which i've tried installing in my machine, but the only thing that seems to recognize them is the Apple System Profiler. The Network System Preference panel only ever shows a single hardware ID to configure, and trying to enable en1 via the terminal fails. Since these aren't Apple OEM cards, i don't know whether it's a driver issue or whether the software isn't up to it currently. I'm not about to invest in a card from Apple until i know it works (assuming i could track one down).

The reason i was hoping to get two interfaces working was to allow my machine to act as a router for a powerbook when it was connected via PPPoE/DSL. In the mean time, however, i've found that i can establish a DSL connection while having a local address active in the Network System Preference. Given that, it might not be necessary (the powerbook's at work for now, so i won't be able to find out until this weekend), but i'm still curious.

Thanks for your efforts,

Jay Timmer

Anyone have the time, interest, and equipment to help Jay answer this?

How to I set up Netinfo to mount my server (Apple Share IP) at the Network Icon?

Dunno.

Does SOCKS work?

Apparently:

Just wanted to drop you a note to tell you that SOCKS (library and clients) seems to compile and run fine w/o any (!) changes to the code. Haven't tried the server though.
(Contributed by Howard Moftich)

Why doesn't ftpd support -S?

Dunno. The man page says that it should.

I'd like to add a cheap AppleShare server to my network. How can Unix help me do that?

This is not the answer Apple would give you, but for my money (with which I'm historically loathe to part), here's the cheapest way to do it:

  1. Get a cheap PC-clone (I use a base-model eMachine). Cost: $350
  2. Install FreeBSD. Cost: FREE
  3. Install netatalk. Cost: FREE
    1. Rebuild kernel with options NETATALK
    2. cd /usr/ports/net/netatalk
    3. make ; sudo make install
    4. reboot
It doesn't hurt that this gives you a full Apache webserver, FTP server, etc in the bargin. And you can back it up with cron, tar, and rsync!

I like Macs and OS-X as much as the next person, but there is NO WAY you can beat that price. For those of you working at schools or on a shoestring budget, that should resonate. And I'll guarantee that you'll learn more by doing it this way than plopping down $3,000+ for a Macintosh/AppleShareIP solution.

--MZ

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