Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I actually spent the better part of the week on this segment and still didn’t get as far as I would have liked. Let’s get started!
There is a reason networking scared me off when I first looked into it back when I was in university. Every computer needs a way to introduce itself to not only its communication counterpart, but all the message carriers along the way. It’s almost unbelievable how easily it all can be smoothed over so even a toddler can get him or herself into trouble without proper supervision. But all the inner workings are still there, churning away, ready for someone to go monkeying around until something breaks.
Last week, I talked about the hardware side of things. I have all the equipment I need ready to use, but it’s waiting on a digital support structure to hold the worker nodes together. My goal for this week was to build that support structure. I would have declared success when I could connect my laptop to an Ethernet network served by the new Pi 4 and access a web page.
Originally, I was aiming to set the router up as a DHCP server so it could hand out IP addresses on the fly. Along the way, I learned how to set up a static IP. Did I mention how ugly raw networking configuration looks to complete beginners?
I honestly don’t know half the stuff I did as I was trying to follow multiple tutorials at once, hoping one would fill in for another when it didn’t apply to my present situation. One blank on a text-based tutorial was elaborated on by a quick comment by a YouTube video, and I ended up stumbling in a third direction in the hopes I was doing the right thing for my project.
And that’s when I can even follow the tutorials! Half the time I landed on a video where some would-be instructor may know what he’s talking about, but his audio quality says he’s working with what he’s got, and that can be a bit sharp on the ears. Another good chunk of the time, it’s someone with a thick accent I wouldn’t be able to understand unless I could ask him to repeat multiple words. Unfortunately, text is going to be the way to go for tutorials at my level of specialization.
I wasn’t able to get the DHCP server sorted out. Something about there can only be one per network, and I have no idea how to confine it to confine it to one network interface — that’s another thing I learned about.
Network interfaces: the whole reason this project is a thing is because the Pi 4 has two separate network interfaces, or ways to access a network, such that it can participate in two distinct networks at once: one for the Ethernet, called Eth0, and one for the WiFi, called wlan0. If that weren’t confusing enough, there’s a new standard that names network interfaces off the hardware they’re connected to. For my intents and purposes, where I only have a single interface per kind of connection, it only serves to confuse when it shows up elsewhere — namely my laptop — but I imagine it would make handling a 50 port switch a little more bearable.
At some point, I gave myself a reality check. I only had five computers to contend with. DHCP is a little bit much for what I’m looking to do. Extra overhead: needs to be axed. I’ll just use static IP’s all around. I went ahead and set my laptop’s Ethernet network interface up with one and rebooted, since I couldn’t seem to restart just the network settings. I had to fix a couple settings, but it was pretty easy to get it to ping –and even ssh into– the Pi 4 over the Ethernet network I had going. The trouble was that I couldn’t access a web page like I wanted.
I messed around a bit and when I was done, I unplugged and connected to my home network, only to find it was being difficult. The best I can figure is that by editing one of the configuration files to give me a static IP, I was accidentally voiding some default for WiFi settings as well. I made an attempt to copy what I had going on from a tutorial on the Pi 4, but due to a series of disconnection issues, I ended up restarting the Pi and losing it on the network.
I was sure to make notes on how to reverse the network damage to my laptop as I made it. I commented out the altered lines, and rebooted again. Still no Pi 4 on the network. I looked on the miniature network again, and eventually resolved to swapping over the HDMI cable to the back of the monitor, only to find a line in ITS network configuration files from when I was experimenting with iptables to solve the present issue.
I’m laying this issue to rest where it is for now. I had some measure of tangible success, but the majority of my efforts were sunk into learning new skills. My laptop is in a usable state, at least.
Final Question: What have you cut out to make things easier on yourself?