Local network issues with FC3

[Harry Moyes]

All

I'm having trouble with network connectivity on FC3.

Not connectivity to the Internet, connectivity to devices on the local
network.

My systems are on a local trusted network behind a firewall.

The local network is 192.168.1.0/24 with the firewall as the default
gateway at 192.168.1.1 and a DNS server at 192.168.1.230.

There are various devices active on the local network, including several
Linux workstations based on Ubuntu, Vector Linux, FC2 and Whitebox
Linux. All interconnect freely. 

Hardware is a mix of single and dual processor systems, from Pentium 200
to dual Athlon 2500. The systems have hard drives in removable caddies
and have been built and rebuilt many times, so hardware compatibility
with Linux is well established.

I've upgraded one of my existing FC2 systems to FC3, and then rebuilt an
FC3 system on a blank disc. I'm seeing the same symptoms in both cases.
I'm presently testing in Athlon 1200 hardware with a integral sis900
NIC.

Either FC3 system can contact the default gateway of the local network,
but cannot contact any device **on** the local network.

Local devices cannot get responses from the FC3 boxes either.

Connection to addresses outside the local network work fine, (given that
DNS queries fail as the boxes cannot see the local DNS server, absolute
IP addresses work fine).

Running Ethereal on the local network, as far as I can see, the FC3
systems are not issuing arp requests onto the local network during
connection attempts.

This is sufficiently complex behaviour (will connect to the gateway,
won't to any other device) that it has to be "intentional".

However trusting the local network, switching off the firewall,
switching off SELinux do not remove this behaviour.

Am I missing something obvious, or is there a bug here somewhere?

The FC3 source disks have verified md5sum's and verify correctly using
the on disc verifier, providing the install kernel is loaded with
ide=nodma, as per Dave Jones note to this list.

Harry