[HECnet] New Nodes

[Christine Caulfield]

Zane H. Healy wrote:
By they way, Angela, you don't need to be running dnroute if your node
is an end-node (which it seems to be). In a situation where the rest of
it doesn't seem to be working properly it's only confusing the issue I
suspect :)


Chrissie,
Am I reading this to mean that it is possible to use a Linux box as a DECnet
Area Router?   If so how hard is it to setup on Ubuntu?   I haven't played
with Linux DECnet in close to a decade.


It should be fairly easy, though I haven't done it for ages!

If Ubuntu has the same startup scripts as Debian then it should be just
a case of enabling routing in /etc/defaults/decnet and starting the
dnroute daemon (which you can also specify in that file). dnroute will
listen for (and send) routing messages and set routes to the nodes it
finds. To use Linux as an area router you need to do a few more things
such as start dnroute with the '-2' switch and tell the kernel the
router level eg:

echo "2" > /proc/sys/net/decnet/conf/eth0/forwarding
echo "2" > /proc/sys/net/decnet/conf/eth1/forwarding
echo "10" > /proc/sys/net/decnet/conf/eth0/priority
echo "10" > /proc/sys/net/decnet/conf/eth1/priority

the dnetinfo command will query the status of the routing daemon and
give you a display similar to the VMS SHOW NETWORK[/OLD] command.

/me makes a note to update the FAQ

Chrissie