Networking notworking

Hi,

I’ve tried getting networking to work with RPCEmu 0.9.0 on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04). I’ve followed the instructions and all is OK except for the last bit—I can ping the gateway and the router (192.168.0.1) but if I ping an address like www.marutan.net I get ‘unknown host www.marutan.net’. I’ve tried setting the nameserver to 8.8.8.8 (Google Public DNS) but the result is the same. This is using RO3.71 and RO4.02.

Any ideas?

First stage diagnostics, can you ping 8.8.8.8?
If not your routing is the issue if yes then your DNS settings are the issue (I’d expect this one to be the case as the error message suggests it isn’t resolving the name to an IP)

You could hack in a hosts entry in the RO settings so that the www.marutan.net name resolves to an IP by that method.

Yes, I can ping 8.8.8.8. It’s not just www.marutan.net that’s affected—any website I’ve tried (Google, BBC, etc) gets the same response.

Sounds like your RO setup isn’t resolving the URL’s to IP’s.
Add 8.8.8.8 as one of your DNS servers in the RO network config and try again – ping first to ensure the changed RO config didn’t produce another quirk and then ping www.bbc.co.uk (that’s pretty much alway there and definitely resolvable to an IP)

If the ping of the URL resolves to an IP and that pings then your system settings are fine and the browser should work.

Already tried that. Made no difference.

Any ideas?

All I can say is that networking is fine here with both OS3.71 and OS4.02 on RPCEmu 0.9.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 on VMware Fusion on an iMac.

The version of UniBoot I have, from ROL, stiffs on OS3.71 so I used ROOL’s !Boot with the pre-OS5 !System added. That does not have a Resolver module so the OS4.02 one was used.

OS4.02 uses a genuine OS4.02 !Boot.

Given the ping by name issue one wonders about the Resolver module. Does OS5 work fully, is it just a 26bit issue?

Some diagnostics :-

*FX0
RISC OS 3.71 (19 Feb 1997)
*Help SharedCLibrary
==> Help on keyword SharedCLibrary
Module is: C Library       5.95 (14 Apr 2018)
*Help Resolver
==> Help on keyword Resolver
Module is: Resolver        0.55 (15 Jun 1998) (Acorn) � ANT Ltd, 1997

*ping <a href="http://www.marutan.net">www.marutan.net</a>
PING <a href="http://www.marutan.net">www.marutan.net</a> (aaa.bbb.cc.dd): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from aaa.bbb.cc.dd: icmp_seq=0 ttl=52 time=14.001 ms
64 bytes from aaa.bbb.cc.dd: icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=14.001 ms

--- <a href="http://www.marutan.net">www.marutan.net</a> ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.001/14.001/14.001 ms
*

Does using NetSurf to access websites fail as well? I seem to remember NetSurf uses its own resolver, so if that doesn’t work either, it may not be the resolver module as such.

If you start RPCEmu from a terminal, does the terminal output indicate any problem with networking (i.e. any kind of error while setting up the IP tunnel)?

Yes, Netsurf fails as well. Tells me no name servers configured. It makes no difference whether I set the DNS server as the recommended 192.168,0.1, or 8.8.8.8, or my ISPs servers; I can ping numerical addresses but names are not resolved. Everything else works as it should.

64-bit OS, but all standard new installations of Ubuntu 18.04 are. OS installed on “real” hardware (HP laptop, connecting via wi-fi).

There are no network-related error messages on starting.