Setting up a PPPOE connection on my dm800 was one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever had , I wonder why there is no documentation about it on the net ! I guess I am the first one documenting it in the world 🙂
In this article we will install PPPOE on my dm800 box , I have Gemini 4.6 installed on it now. a “uname -a” command give the following output :
root@dm800:/etc# uname -a
Linux dm800 2.6.12-5.1-brcmstb-dm800 #1 Wed Mar 11 20:59:15 CET 2009 7401c0-nand unknown
first we need to install several kernel modules on our dreambox :
ipkg install kernel-module-slhc
ipkg install kernel-module-ppp-generic
ipkg install kernel-module-pppox
ipkg install kernel-module-pppoe
then we need to install PPP and PPPOE package , I don’t know why they are not available in default repo of Gemini image , but after a lot of search I found them in dreamboxupdate.com repo , so next step is to download and install them :
cd /tmp
wget http://dreamboxupdate.com/opendreambox/1.5/dm800/feed-rel_27/ppp_2.4.3-r2_mipsel.ipk
wget http://dreamboxupdate.com/opendreambox/1.5/dm800/feed-rel_27/ppp-oe_2.4.3-r2_mipsel.ipk
ipkg install ppp_2.4.3-r2_mipsel.ipk
ipkg install ppp-oe_2.4.3-r2_mipsel.ipk
after installing all of required packages , we need to load the required kernel modules into memory.
so run the following commands :
depmod -a
modprobe pppoe
now we should have all required kernel modules loaded :
root@dm800:/etc/init.d# lsmod
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
pppoe 12416 0 - Live 0xc01ed000
pppox 2864 1 pppoe, Live 0xc01a8000
ppp_generic 29792 2 pppoe,pppox, Live 0xc01b3000
slhc 7552 1 ppp_generic, Live 0xc01a5000
Please note pppoe kernel module is loaded now.
OK , now we are ready to go and connect our PPPOE connection , to do this simply run the following command ( change USERNAME & PASSWORD in following command to your own PPPOE username and password ) :
pppd plugin rp-pppoe.so eth0 user USERNAME password PASSWORD noauth defaultroute replacedefaultroute persist maxfail 0
thats it 🙂 if you have done everything correctly now , you should be connected now.
to disconnect from your PPPOE connection , simply run the following command :
killall pppd
Troubeshooting :
Sometimes I noticed , pppoe module doesnt get loaded (by command “modprobe pppoe”) with an error message while I had all required modules installed , after a lot of tries and errors I found out a reinstall of ppp_2.4.3-r2_mipsel.ipk resolves the issue , may be it is a bug.
After you have pppoe loaded in memory and checked it by “lsmod” command , if your connection still does not work , you can debug it by running syslog daemon and adding a “debug” option to the end of “pppd” command as follows :
syslogd
pppd plugin rp-pppoe.so eth0 user USERNAME password PASSWORD noauth defaultroute replacedefaultroute persist maxfail 0 debug
now you can go to “/var/log/” folder and check messages file. any errors or problems should be reported there , I suggest you to open another telnet or ssh to your dreambox and run the following commands :
cd /var/log/
tail -f messages
and now run the pppd , you can simultaneously see all debug messages.