0

System A has Wi-Fi Internet access and an Ethernet port, while System B has just an Ethernet port. I connected the ports directly to each other. Both are fairly modern desktop PCs running Ubuntu 10.04.

On A I ran:

$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.0.1/24 dev eth0

$ ip route
10.66.225.0/24 dev ra0  proto kernel  scope link  src 10.66.225.153  metric 2 
192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.0.1 
169.254.0.0/16 dev ra0  scope link  metric 1000 
default via 10.66.225.1 dev ra0  proto static

On B I ran:

$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.0.2/24 dev eth0

However, when I now try to ping 192.168.0.2 from .1, I get:

$ ping 192.168.0.2
PING 192.168.0.2 (192.168.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.0.1 icmp_seq=1 Destination Port Unreachable
From 192.168.0.1 icmp_seq=2 Destination Port Unreachable

Any hints? TIA.

1
  • Please add the output of tail /var/log/ufw.log to rule out any inadvertent firewall behaviour (unlikely) and also the output from each box of ifconfig -a to inspect packet statistics. Finally, did you use a crossover cable, or are you relying on one of the NICs having crossover detection? Or when you said you connected them together, did you imply a hub/switch? In that case, what kind?
    – Scaine
    Aug 15, 2012 at 22:32

2 Answers 2

1

Try using an Ethernet hub or switch to connect the two machines. If the machines are old then you can't use a conventional UTP cable to connect them. (You can use a crossover cable.) Even if the machines are new and are equipped with Auto-MDIX, what can happen is that both machines have their Ethernet ports switched off and niether one will switch its port on until connected to a peer with an enabled port.

0

And like magic, I just pressed up enter to retry the same command again some 10m later, and it works. I'll still mark another answer as accepted if someone can explain why this happened.

Update: Just tried doing the same thing again, and once more I'm getting Destination Host Unreachable errors, except this time it's been hours and the problem hasn't gone away.

2
  • Any other Wi-Fi routers near you?
    – Mitch
    Aug 14, 2012 at 7:16
  • The packets to .2 are being sent to eth0, so Wi-Fi routers should be unrelated.
    – xyzzyrz
    Aug 14, 2012 at 9:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .