Network troubleshooting

RULE #1: DO NOT turn off the DHCP server in your router until your HDA has full network connectivity

Your HDA should be capable of browsing all the major sites and http://www.amahi.org before doing anything else.

If you do not have connectivity, you may want to check that the settings that you programmed in amahi.org for your network and router match that of your actual network and the router in it. Amahi assumes a regular, typical home network and the settings there should be done to match what you have. The most common error is that the gateway is not set up properly. We have a page on how to Find Your Gateway IP.

Please note that only the first NIC/ethernet card is supported out of the box. If you have two, please make sure you disable the one not used in your network.

There is a final critical step to Transition to Amahi for your network. Your clients need to be using Amahi for DNS for it all to be working as expected.

Amahi 7/8/9/10/11 (Fedora 19/21/23/25/27) Prerequisite

You will need to install the network tools package (or HDA Troubleshooting Tools web application):

yum install net-tools bind-utils

NOTE: yum (deprecated) has been replaced with dnf as the package manager for Fedora 23 and greater.

Identify the problem

To help you identify a network problem you might have, try using the Interactive Amahi Network Troubleshooter. If it fails along the way, it will give you instructions on how to get additional help, and how to provide us with the information we need to help you understand and fix the problem.

Additional Diagnosis

If the Interactive Amahi Network Troubleshooter can't help, you can try the steps below, and tell us (on IRC, or in the forums) what step you get stuck at.

Step 1

From your hda itself (via ssh or at the desktop in a terminal), can you:

1. ping hda (it should ping the IP of your HDA; this ensures the dns server is working)
2. ping router (it should ping the IP of the router; this ensures your HDA can see the router)
3. ping 8.8.8.8 (this ensures you can see the rest of the world)
4. ping yahoo.com (this ensures your dns server can see the world)
5. Access http://hda in a browser (or use curl in a terminal)

If the above does not work, try and fix it by double checking the settings.

After the above works, you should be able to access

           http://hda

from the HDA machine's desktop!

If the above works, then and only then you may turn off the DHCP server in your router.

IMPORTANT: after turning off the DHCP server in your router, you must renew your client's IP addresses.

Step 2

If you want to use the full functionality of your HDA, you must make sure your client has a DHCP lease from your HDA from here on, so let's move to one or more of the clients (after their network has restarted:

1. ping hda (this ensures the client can see the DNS server in your HDA)
2. ping router (this ensures the client can see your network gateway)
3. ping yahoo.com (this ensures the client can see the world)

If you want to stop by the IRC channel for help, it would speed things up to report where you are "stuck" in that list, like step 1.3, or 2.2. You should also say:

• What client operating system are your other machines in the network using
• At what point did you turn off your router DHCP (if you did)
• At what point, relative to the above, did you restart (or release and renew the DHCP lease on the) clients

Non Default Network Set-ups

If your router does not have an IP of 192.168.1.1, the following command will make the process easy to allow your HDA to work:

su -
hda-change-gw [gateway IP] 

Example if your default gateway (router) has an IP of 192.168.0.1:

hda-change-gw 192.168.0.1

NOTE: You will need to restart your server after applying the change.

Can't Disable Router DHCP

It's unusual, but not unheard of, to not be able to disable DHCP on the router. Most notable is the case of using an Airport Express for DHCP service.

Refer to the Apple Airport Express guidance for a work around.

This same technique may work with other router brands.

When all else fails

In some cases, it could be the client OS causing issues.

One known issue is the Windows Networking Issue

Back to the Troubleshooting.