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Cannot access WebIF: Internet coming through ethernet out of Mac Mini

M

MattUKCameraman

New Member
I had the Custom Firmware and Web IF working well in the pat but gave up due to too many lame power line adaptors. I recently bought a mid 2010 mac mini to run as a media centre next to my Humax HDR Fox T2, and discovered I could set the mac mini's ethernet connection to supply an internet connection out, and have connected the two together with cat 5 cable.

I can access iPlayer etc again, no problems, and hoped I could get the custom firmware working again. I have installed the latest 2.19, and can access the remote scheduler and iPlayer etc; but I cannot access the Web IF. Searching for the LAN address on the network via firefox and safari on two different computers and mobile safari on two different iPhones gives the same result: a blank page until the "server stopped responding" message comes up.

My O2 wireless box can see an ethernet connected device with the same MAC address as my Humax, but gives its status as 'inactive'. I'm not sure if this is relevant or not. I have also tried accessing through Telnet to no avail.

I realise my set up is a bit unusual, but any help would be most welcome.
 
What are the IP address of the Humax, the router and the Mac mini? Can you ping the Humax from the computers you are using to access the Humax web interface?
 
Hi Martin, thanks for your quick reply.

Humax is 192.168.2.2
Router is 192.168.1.254
Mac Mini is 192.168.1.65

Don't know what you mean by ping or what it entails.
 
Hopefully a networking expert will along in a minute. However I would say that the fact that Humax is on a different subnet will be the reason you can't access it from other computers. Ping is the most basic of network diagnostic tools. You open a command prompt and type

ping 192.168.2.2
 
resulted in:

PING 192.168.2.2 (192.168.2.2): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3

etc and counting, currently seq 175.
 
Assuming you have the default subnet mask on each device of 255.255.255.0 then the humax is on a different network so will not see the other 2

Change the humax ip address to 192.168.1.x where x is anything other than 65 or 254 which are already used
 
The problem here is the Mac in between. It is creating a separate network with Internet access rather than an extension to the existing network, and I suspect the different subnet is part of that scheme that will require fixing (if possible) in the Mac. How is the Mac connecting to the router - WiFi?
 
Thanks for that, Kevin. I do have the default subnet mask as you describe. I have tried to change the IP address to ..1.007, ..1.061 and ..1.161; but all of these have failed to apply, and the Humax has flashed the message "network connection has failed".

I don't know if its relevant but the Gateway Address and DNS Address of the Humax is 192.168.2.1
 
Black hole is right (I should have read the initial message correctly)

Does the mac mini have 2 ip addresses 192.168.1.65 on wifi and 192.162.2.1 on its Ethernet port?
 
Ok

Don't know how to configure the mac mini but the 169 address won't work

Try putting the humax back to 192.168.2.2 and change the ipv4 address of the eternet port on the mac mini to 192.168.2.1

Then repeat the ping command from the mac mini
 
Thank you very much for this Kevin. I did as you said and can now access the web IF, albeit only from the mac mini, but that's all i need. I'm now back in the world of custom firmware! Thanks a million.
 
Glad it's working

I think the key to accessing from other wifi devices would be setting up sharing on the mac mini as per the link above, but I've not used a mac mini so only basing this on what I've read.

My spelling is atrocious!
 
It's been decades since I mucked about with manually configuring networks but it sounds to me like you need to set up routing on the mac mini so that it routes stuff between the two subnets.

I've just been playing with networking in my place as I wanted to add a second wifi access point by re-using an old wifi router and this had similar problems. I connected the hummy to the original router (wired connection) and another wired connection to a homeplug. Then I connected the old router to another homeplug. A bit of careful tuning of the old router (in particular turning off DHCP) and I am now able to connect to the hummy and the internet from devices connected to the old router. They even get their IP configured automatically via the DHCP on the newer router which was something I had not expected. My first attempts seemed to work and I could access the hummy but then I found no devices could access the internet (that was before I turned off DHCP) not sure what was happening there but it seemed to set up a loop of routes such that nothing could get out but everything internal could communicate fine.

Anyway, the reason I am telling this tale is to show that setting up two networks with routing between them can work very well, in my case I avoided having two subnets and everything appears as one network which is the best possible solution for me. Maybe the mac networking can be configured to share the network rather that route between them and not act as it's own DHCP on the second network. I've had software on a Windows box doing that before now, sharing a wifi network with another wifi network so acting as a network extender.
 
Firstly, I know nothing about Mac Minis.

Can you bridge the Ethernet and Wireless ports of the Mac together ? That would be the easiest solution.
If not, you could have 2 subnets, routed by the Mac Mini.
Or you could carve out 4 IP addresses from your "real" range, and use those to create a link between Humax and Mac over the Ethernet cable, with the Mac using wireless to contact the main router. This would need you to run Proxy ARP on the Ethernet port of the Mac, and I don't have a clue as to whether that's possible.
 
Andrew - your right mac mini needs to act as a bridge

From what I read that's what the mac mini calls sharing

May be a need to add a route on the router too so that it rooutes requests for the second network via the mac

I think Matt is happy with what he has at present though
 
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