Ubuntu client can see ff server with eth0 but not wlan0 – ?

[richo132]

I’d appreciate some pointers on how to solve what appears to be a networking problem.
I have ff installed on a Debian server and it is accessible to several iTunes clients on XP boxes.
It is also visible to a Rhythmbox / Ubuntu client via wireless and to a second Rhythmbox / Ubuntu client
via cabled Ethernet (- both using Avahi).
Problem is that the second R/U box cannot see the ff server via wireless LAN.
It can however access a Samba share on the ff server via wireless.
TIA for any help.

[CCRDude]

There are a lot of similar posts around (I guess Ron should start a “FAQ topic” and make it sticky for things like this 😉 ): usually it seems to have to do with Wireless Access Points that do not forward the multicasting packets properly, check your AP to see if there’s an option to allow those.

Not sure if the avahi-Daemon needs to be told about the port as well, maybe check the avahi config as well?

[richo132]

Thanks for the suggestion – I’ll follow it up tonight.
However, one client is working correctly by wireless LAN.
As both clients use the same WAP, could there be a client-side problem with multicast packets ?

[rpedde]

@richo132 wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion – I’ll follow it up tonight.
However, one client is working correctly by wireless LAN.
As both clients use the same WAP, could there be a client-side problem with multicast packets ?

Yes, the interface it’s using might not support multicast either… you can sometimes make it work anyway by pushing the interface into promiscuous mode. Something of a CPU drain, but not a huge one if the wireless link isn’t too busy:

root@box:~# ifconfig eth1 promisc

— Ron

[richo132]

Well I’ve finally solved this issue.
Seems that I had 2 problems, both related to Edgy Eft
Firstly the distro apparently included a broken driver for my WG111v2 USB adaptor. Cure for this was to blacklist the dodgy driver and use ndiswrapper to package the Win98 drivers.
However, this flushed out the second problem – ndiswrapper is also broken in Edgy. It includes an incompatible version of the ndiswrapper-utils package.

Diagnosis was hampered by the fact that the WG111v2 worked for some things eg Firefox and Samba but not for multicast packets.
Anyway, its all good now, so thanks again for your assistance.

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