Sometimes it's not the user....

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Cautionary tale time.

I was installing a nice shiny new network LAN drive today. One with a fancy new enclosure [and ok, a not-so new 160gb samsung HD, but there you go, money is tight everywhere]. Since this was on my home network, I guess I was the user for a change.

Seeing as it was slightly different from ones I'd used previously, I was playing it safe and following the makers manual. Which was nicely written in clear English for a change. Actually felt a bit weird, reading instructions to set it up that weren't in engrish.

Anyway, everything set up, green lights all round annnnd.. huh.. nothing. No sign of the drive on the network.
So, test the cable, good ... plug drive into laptop... no problem seeing it, plug laptop into router, again no problem... try plugging both drive and laptop into router...and woops again with the nothing!

Ok, hard reset everything and huh.. no router now?! Ummmm....

Upshot, and some hacking around in the spiffy new admin interface for the drive, it turns out both the router and drive had a DHCP client [ed- server, I mistyped] and were basically both trying to assign an IP to each other...and which one got knocked off the net depended on which booted first!

Something that the nice and easy to read manual completely and utterly failed to mention. Both that the drive controller had a DHCP server, and that it was default enabled. In fact, the manual made rather a big fuss about the drive being a simple 'plug & play'... which it very definitely was not.

Round about that point, I started to imagine the sort of help-desk calls this was going to generate for someone... and was very glad I wasn't working for that company!

Sometimes, the manuals, they lie!!

Comments

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Oh man.. maybe they should either fire the technical writer who wrote the manual, or they should've told the person about that. :/ 'Cause it is possible the person making the manual didn't even know that.

[betawriter.livejournal.com]

'Cause it is possible the person making the manual didn't even know that.

That happens all the time. I mean, we TRY to figure all this stuff out and become experts on what we're writing, but we do depend heavily on engineers and software folks to read what we compile and figure out the errors or holes.

Plus, sometimes hardware gets redesigned after the manual is published or is final and no one lets the writer know. Lots of things could happen. We're all human.

(But I feel bad that a manual let the OP down...*sighs*...we do try.)

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Best you can do is to do your best and hope the customer doesn't have any troubles. Worst case scenerio, they add another sheet of paper with manuals including that info. I've had that w/ some HP products I've bought.

[travisd.livejournal.com]

Generally, and DHCP Client is a host that receives it's address info from a DHCP Server.

And yes, multiple unrelated DHCP servers on a single LAN are Evil.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

You mean like when you reboot a lab of windows machines and watch the netbios name traffic, all basically saying "I'm here!!!!", and then once they're all here, they have an election and decide who is the boss...

which is some visiting students laptop running XP when all the other machines are 2K..

and then they get all confused and need another election when the laptop gets up an leaves..

Solution - Samba acting as WINS server as a forced master which always wins browser elections....

[azurelunatic]

Your description looks like goose social dynamics in my head, so I am picturing this labful of computers literally acting like that.

Also, the laptop grows feet and scurries off.

[jecook]

*falls out of chair laughing*

That's exactly how it works.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

oy vey.... tell me about it... imagine if you will what happens when you have someone's first LAN party [as in first one they've organised, although maybe that's not the right word for it]... Broadcast storm, wifi version.

105 laptops, 15 access points, 10 DSL lines and no bloody clue!

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

yeah me too actually...since I wasn't the one running technical support. It was an interesting case study in just how big a FUBAR one can get!

Made all the worse of course, by the fact they'd decided to do it open access [so no security].. I think at one point we must have had half the city trying to score free internet access. Meant the AP's were swamped of course, and of course half the damn laptops had no security enabled either [not that it mattered since most were windows boxes].. can we say Hackers Paradise?!

Yup, it was a beowolf Cluster F**k [ie, of epic proportions]

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

whoa.. sweet set up! Going to be doing some serious rendering with that! [or frag the hell out of a lot of someones online!]

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, facepalm time. I typed client instead of server because that's what I'm used to.

[azurelunatic]

Fucking manual.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Just being a picky asshole. "client" I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

See edit... my brains spell-checker decided to auto-complete client for server because that's what it was expecting to see in context!

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Okay - router doing DHCP I get - all the ones I've seen do that.

A server I can see doing it.

Why the hell would a net drive do it?

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Please RTFM on what DHCP is, and how a DHCP client is different from a DHCP server.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

See edits... I goofed on typing. I know the diff'

Hey, I speak machine much better than human!

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I understood what the origional poster meant. My question stands: Why would a network drive act as a DHCP server? I can understand a router (don't they all do that?) and I can understand a server doing it - I've got domain servers and Win2K3 boxes that do that.

Why would a network drive need to do it?

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Beats me too, which is why it threw me... I guess it might be useful if you had a network which only had a switch box maybe... but still...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Why would a network drive act as a DHCP server? I can understand a router (don't they all do that?)

No; some just route.

I can understand a server doing it - I've got domain servers and Win2K3 boxes that do that

A network drive *is* a server.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

I have never, ever encountered a consumer/small business grade router that did not have an embedded DHCP server. At most, some of the higher end ($500+) units don't have it on by default. A NAS, on the other hand, has no business running a DHCP server. In 99.9% of scenarios, it's going to get plugged into an existing network, and existing networks typically have DHCP servers of their own. An embedded DHCP server in a NAS only makes sense if you're using it for point-to-point connection to a single computer, which defeats the whole purpose of it being NAS, and gives you a very slow DAS box instead.

Of course then you have NetGear who came up with the brilliant idea of a consumer level SAN...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

A NAS, on the other hand, has no business running a DHCP server.

Since the OP has declined to specify the suspect hardware, we have no idea if this is actually the case, or if it's just another level of mistake on their part.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

hey, I was asleep dude! [GMT zone here]

The drive enclosure is located here (http://www.mediacase.co.uk/)

I think the reason it's got a DHCP server is because it's also designed to work as a stand-alone USB or single point ethernet drive connected to a single computer...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Freecom makes a network drive enclosure with a DHCP server:

http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/rev.php?id=631


and Cisco acknowledges some kind of repeatable situation where NAS devices can have DHCP service onboard:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk713/tk507/technologies_tech_note09186a0080093c77.shtml

[gholam.livejournal.com]

As we both know, just because people can do it, doesn't mean they should. NetGear SC101 is a perfect example of that.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I won't argue that the reason is likely bogus, but if we can identify what the bogus reason is, we can be better prepared to rebut it and to identify other misbegotten products predicated on it.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, the manuals, they lie!!

This is very true. However in this case, the user is mistaken about what DHCP clients do.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

No, in this case when documenting it, the user typed client instead of server.
ie, both router and drive were acting as server.

hey,a guy can make an honest mistake, especially when I'm more used tot he network drive being the client...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

If you can tell me the make and model of the network drive, I shall enlighten you.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

http://www.mediacase.co.uk/

[zzyzx.livejournal.com]

Why would a network drive even have a DHCP server? *boggles*

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

well, I guess they thought it'd be a nice shiny to go with the new control panel... beats me why some manufacturers do any thing sometimes.