[PLUG] A little more help with Pyramid Linux on Metrix Mark II

[Benjamin Watson]

All knowing PLUG Listers,

I've posed questions before and have received constructive comments
(which I greatly appreciate), so here goes.

I've got a small wireless mesh network setup in the following topology:

L1<---link1--->R1<---link2--->R2<---link3--->L2

L1 and L2 are laptops (WinXP with wireless cards)

R1 and R2 are mesh routers with dual wireless cards and an ethernet
port (Pyramid Linux).

R1 is connected to the "Internet" via its ethernet port (eth0).

R2 is not connected directly to the Internet (its eth0 port is open).


The routing on R1 and R2 is accomplished by running OSLRd on the
radios on R1 and R2 responsible for maintaining the link2 connection.
For all intents and purposes, OSLRd is merely maintaining routing
tables on R1 and R2.  I use HNA announcements on R1 and R2 to
broadcast connectivity to LANs (wlan0 AP on R1 and R2) and the
Internet (eth0 on R1 only).


Under my current configuration, L1 is hosting a web server and FTP server.
L2 is able to ping L1 over the mesh, and can even access the FTP
server on L1 and transfer files.

Question #1:

However, L2 is unable to pull up the default web page hosted on L1.
I've witnessed a successful TCP handshake between the two, but the
HTTP connection is never established.  What might be blocking this?
IPTABLES on R1 is currently setup with default policies to allow
everything, and performs SNAT to the IP on eth0 to facilitate Internet
access.  IPTABLES on R2 isn't configured at all (defaults to allow
everything).

This same problem occurs when L2 attempts to access the Internet.  L1
can surf the web with no problems (it can even resolve DNS names).
L2, on the other hand, can't resolve DNS names, but even more, it
cannot pull up web sites on the Internet (by IP address) while having
the capability to ping the Internet IP address.

I've installed Lynx on R1 and R2 to troubleshoot the problem and have
verified that R1 can pull up the web page on L1, but R2 cannot (same
symptom as experienced by R2).

Question #2:

I mentioned the DNS issue.  R1 connects to a cable/DSL router via DHCP
and obtains all of the DNS settings "automagically", thereby allowing
L1 to do DNS lookups and resolve names.

Does anyone have a link to a HOWTO or advise for getting DNS
information on R2 via R1, thereby allowing L2 to do DNS lookups and
resolve names?

I've done some poking around regarding dnsmasq and the nameservice
plugin to OSLRd, but the combination of the two leaves me scratching
my head and my attempts to configure this have been uneventful.


Thanks in advance, and thanks for your help in the past!

Ben