[LUNI] Networking question

[Ramin K]

Richard Reina wrote:
> I have a linux box that stays hooked up to the internet.  Once a day
> I need  to hook it up to our private LAN (no outside connection). I
> take the ethernet cable out of the router and plug it into our switch
> and use /usr/sbin/setup to assign it and IP address on our LAN.  I
> then execute /sbin/service network restart but I can't communicate
> with machines on my local LAN -- I can't even ping any of them.  If I
> reboot the machine all is well and I can comunicate with the network.
> Is there something that I am omitting? Is there a way to change
> networks without rebooting?
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions.
> 
> Richard

Linux tends to do strange things when the broadcast and netmasks are 
incorrect. Well I suppose it's safe to say that almost any OS reacts 
strangely to those problems.

I'd do an ifconfig from the command line on the machine after you've set 
the IP. Then check that against another machine on the network to see if 
everything matches. If you need to modify things on the interface 
directly a variation of this command line will work

ifconfig eth0 10.13.20.14 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.13.20.255

I suspect it's not routing since everything should be on the local 
subnet/LAN. DNS is a possibility, you might want to ping by IP if you're 
not already.

Ramin