Difficulty Accessing Plugins with a Static IP on Cascaded Router Setup

[cinemafunk]

Hello,

I have a cascaded router setup:

• Primary router is a Netgear WNDR4300v2 and it’s IP is 192.168.1.1 (255.255.255.0) with DHCP enabled. My primary PC and network devices are on this router, as well as serving WiFi.
• Secondary router is a Netgear WNDR4300 and I’ve set the IP to 192.168.1.2 (255.255.255.0). The secondary router’s DHCP is disabled. This is the router which is connected to my machine’s primary ethernet port and IPMI port. I’ve gone back and forth adding the 192.168.1.9 IP address to the machine set to it’s MAC address on this router.

I have been able to successfully configure my FreeNas machine to 192.168.1.9, however, when I do I am unable to retrieve the Plugin list and receive error <urlopen error [Errno 8] hostname nor servname provided, or not known>. There is more to this error, was not sure if everyone would need that information at this time, and can provide it later. Additionally, I am unable to ping any website.

Of course, when I revert my machine back to DHCP, and I able to return to normal functionality and retrieve the list of plugins. I’d consider myself slightly above advanced when it comes to networking, but at this point, I’ve reached my skillset’s ceiling.

My goal is to have a static IP as well as utilize plugins and other features. Please let me know if you need more information to help diagnose this issue. I’ve Googled similar issues with varying situations, and was unable to find a situation that matched my own.

Specs:

• FreeNAS-11.2-RC1
• SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O
• Intel Pentium G2140 3.3GHZ
• 12GB RAM ECC RAM
• 4 X 4TB in RAIDZ2

 

[jgreco]

I guess the question here would be "is this actually a cascaded router" ("bad") or "i'm using the second router only as an access point and it is doing no NAT" situation.

 

[cinemafunk]

I really don't know how to respond to your message. If using a cascaded router option is bad, that's fine. If there is "no NAT", any assistance is would be helpful. Again, I stated my networking skillset is limited.

 

[Jailer]

Are all cables connected to the LAN ports on the secondary router?

 

[cinemafunk]

All of the cables for the FreeNAS machine are connected to the LAN ports on the secondary router.

 

[Jailer]

Are all cables connected to the LAN ports on the secondary router?

All cables? Not just the FreeNAS ones. It makes a difference.

Better question, are any cables connected to the WAN port on the secondary router?

 

[pschatz100]

If it all works when DHCP is enabled, then you might be missing something when you set the static IP - such as the DNS Gateway or the Nameserver.

The easiest way to check what these values might be: enable DHCP, boot the system, use ifconfig from the shell to see what the values are. You could then change the system to static IP and enter all the information.

 

[cinemafunk]

Jailer, nothing is connected to the WAN port on the secondary router.

Pschatz100, I'll try that after some syncs complete this evening.

 

[cinemafunk]

My ifconfig results:

root@maria[~]# ifconfig
em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC>
ether REDACTED
hwaddr REDACTED
inet 192.168.1.25 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
em1: flags=8c02<BROADCAST,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC>
ether REDACTED
hwaddr REDACTED
nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
media: Ethernet autoselect
status: no carrier
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
groups: lo
root@maria[~]#

I removed my MAC Address info.

192.168.1.25 is my current FreeNas GUI address. Ideally that is the IP address I'd like to set manually. Would the broadcast be the Gateway?
192.168.1.20 is my NextCloud installation.

 

[pschatz100]

192.168.1.25 is my current FreeNas GUI address. Ideally that is the IP address I'd like to set manually. Would the broadcast be the Gateway?
192.168.1.20 is my NextCloud installation.

OK. I'm not entirely clear...
In your original post, you said you wanted the IP address to be 192.168.1.9. Now, you want it to be 192.168.1.25?
Unfortunately, ifconfig only gives the IP address, not the Gateway or the Nameserver being used. I thought it might tell you more. :(

When you set a static IP address in FreeNAS, what values are you using for IPv4 Default Gateway and Nameserver(s)? I suspect your Default Gateway should be 192.168.1.1 as that is the primary router with DHCP enabled. For Nameservers, FreeNAS allows up to three. Try setting the first one to 192.168.1.1 (likely your default gateway) and the second one to 8.8.8.8 which is a public nameserver maintained by Google.

An additional question:
1) What is the allowed DHCP range in your primary router? Any static IP address you want to assign has to be outside the allowed DHCP range.

 

[cinemafunk]

Hi pschatz100,

That did it! I was unaware that I need to assign the Default Gateway to my Primary Router and add the nameservers as you suggested. Thank you.

I may have not been clear earlier when I had enabled DHCP on my secondary router to run the ifconfig. I had disabled my static IP on my FreeNAS Box under the assumption that DHCP would assign the IP address. But I think I'm in a good position here. I'm not able to assign 192.168.1.9 as my IP, see all the available plugins, as well as install a few.

Thank you again for your help.