The Walmart HDMI to DVI dongle (“onn” brand) works fine. Also a nice lesson in why Amazon should be a last resort: If no one buys this sort of thing locally, no one will stock this sort of thing locally. The wireless USB thingy also works fine with the Pi. Arguably, I should have purchased a keyboard and mouse while I was there: Windows crashed after sitting without a keyboard for a while, but only once over several hours of removal and replacement.
The Pi booted into N00BS and bootstrapped itself up to the OS formerly known as Raspbian. I sort of followed Patrick’s instructions for getting IP forwarding working. The big difference is that I’ve flipped the NICs: wlan0 is the “outside” and eth0 is the “inside”. I plugged it directly into my Windows machine, which got a DHCP lease and can ssh into the Pi.
I’m a bit stuck on what to do next. The Pi and the Windows box are both hooked to the Starlink Wifi which running 192.168.1.0/24. I want the Pi connected to the CenturyLink router, but I have no idea how three DHCP servers are going interact. They might play well since the CenturyLink router is 192.168.0.0/24 and the Pi router is 192.168.64.0/24. Only one way to find out…
I’m writing this, so I haven’t destroyed Teh Intertubes. The chain is working, but I’m not entirely happy with it, yet. Working inward:
- The Starlink router (aka Starlink623)
- “outside” is 136.22.111.161, which is whatever the dish connects to
- “inside” is 192.168.1.1 managing WiFi-only 192.168.1.0/24
- functionally it is just DHCP and forwarding, as far as I can tell
- The Pi router (nameless)
- “outside” is 192.168.1.109 (wlan0 DHCPed by 192.168.1.1)
- “inside” is 192.168.64.47 (eth0, configured itself)
- functionally it is just (unneeded) DHCP and forwarding
- The CenturyLink router (aka 15Grant and 15Grant_5G)
- “outside” is 192.168.64.184 (DHCPed by 192.168.64.47)
- “inside” is 192.168.65.1 (itself) managing WiFi and wired 192.168.65.0/24
- functionally it is just DHCP and forward, but it can do a lot; I found the web interface at http://inside-ip
- The Windows box (aka mrsizer-HP)
- It only has one side: 192.168.65.2 (DHCPed by 192.168.65.1)
What is the point of all this? I want to know what’s going on with the network. This means that neither the Starlink nor the CenturyLink router will suffice because while they can do things, there is no way to audit what they’re doing. The Starlink router also has no wired ports; everything must be WiFi. The CenturyLink router has four wired ports and I can always toss a Netgear switch on one of them should I want more.
In terms of “wiring” and routing, the network is complete (until the home automation subnet is added). Software-wise, I want to make the Pi router more functional.
Tomorrow’s goal is get all the stuff that we connected to the Starlink623 network because it was the only choice connected to the 15Grant network, which probably needs renaming. Perhaps Groundlink623. Homelink623 or Yardlink623 have the same number of characters. Then change the Starlink623 password to something outrageously strange (a guid?) and stuff that in the fireproof safe, never to be seen by human eyes, again.
THEN I’ll start playing with the Pi functionality:
- iptables configuration and logging
- PiHole
- Squid
- dnsmasq logging
- some way of looking at those logs
Then I’ll have a fully baked Pi!
Marked Up 