Enjoying Break; Gentoo Fails

So I’m a week into my break, and it’s Christmas Eve! I’ve been mostly offline for the last few days as I’ve been trying to load Gentoo onto our server (from the flakey Fedora). Working with speeds literally around 800 b/s, I finally managed to get all the packages I wanted installed. (All the big stuff was downloaded elsewhere with broadband connections.) Weird stuff was going on with the nat firewall, though. I could ftp and ssh through the gateway just fine, but web requests (while they DO establish a tcp connection with the server) never received any response. And trying to get on the AIM network with Gaim caused it to hang and eventually time out when it says “Password sent.”

I tried kernels 2.6.9-gentoo-r10, 2.6.8.1, 2.6.6, and even 2.4.28… probably overkill, but I knew pretty much for sure it wasn’t the kernel at that point. I also tried FireHOL to test the workiness of my favorite projectfiles.com firewall script (which has worked every time in the past).

So anyway, after rebuilding the bare bones of Gentoo (from stage3) from scratch, and observing the same behavior, I gave up. Now, I’ve got Ubuntu Linux on there, and it’s working great. Ubuntu has recently become my second favorite distribution for being so damn simple in nature. GUI package managers and configurator dealios coupled with a solid Debian foundation and great autodetection etc etc… make Ubuntu one sweet distro. I was trying to go for a minimalist server with my Gentoo approach, but I guess my dad doesn’t mind a friendly Gnome desktop with lots of GUI tools.

Friday, December 24th, 2004 Computers, Software

3 Comments to Enjoying Break; Gentoo Fails

While it’s a bit disappointing to hear that Gentoo didn’t work out, it’s interesting that you made the move to Ubuntu. Gentoo was my favorite operating system until recently, when I installed Ubuntu. :) I think I would still use Gentoo for a server; I’ve never had the network problems you described.

Judging from the things I have heard during my short stay in the Ubuntu chat room and forums, not many people have done this yet. Keep us posted on how that works out; I’m trying to set it up as a development server myself.

Tom on December 24th, 2004

quick to drop gentoo eh? nah just kidding.

i’ve never used that firewall though it looks very full featured. First I would double check that all the netfilter modules are loaded/compiled in. Then I would check with the firewall down. If the problem is in the firewall, then i would run it line by line (i use my own firewall script so this is much easier for me to say): set DROP default, enable NAT, open some ports up, etc. whatever is required. if its not the firewall, I would check the internet device (is this just incoming on a netword card, or modem? check the modem software) If all else fails, search on forums.gentoo.org.

Don’t get me wrong, there is something to be said for binary distro’s. (even though ubuntu’s mission statement sounds like a cult) You can’t beat the ease of installation. I would have been a good exercise to fix the issue still using gentoo, but its good that you got it working. It sounds fun, i enjoy fixing things like that (explains why i run most of my software off CVS), sounds fun.

Brad

Brad Barnich on December 24th, 2004

I kept a backup of my Gentoo root fs… if I have reason to believe something will help, I might revert back and give it a whirl. I’m still not crazy about using Ubuntu on the server, but I guess with some tweaking it’s okay. (I had to install openssh-server separately!)

To answer your suggestions, Brad, I tried the several different kernel versions with lots of stuff compiled in. I’ve done this before, so I know what I need. And it sort of DID work — many services were able to be nat’d through the server without troubles. In terms of the firewall, I tried the two different firewalls independently for the same results. I’m using the exact same version of the projectfiles.com rc.firewall in Ubuntu now to share the connection.

Seriously, I mostly know what I’m doing. This is a freak of software, and I can’t narrow it down.