WANem hard disc install & bridge setup

WANem

WANen is a Knoppix based livecd Linux system which you use to emulate wide area network links. You can enforce a certain bandwidth, delay, packet loss, jitter, and so on. Usually WANem is booted from a livecd and operates in routing mode. This short article describes howto install WANem on a hard disc and operate it in switch mode.

Hard disc install

Download the WANem iso file (I used v2.2)
- Burn that iso file to a cdrom in order to boot your WANem machine. At least, you will need a 2 GB hdd and 256 MB ram. I recommend a good pair of nics and a 1 GHz or so CPU
- Alternatively, you might boot WANem in a virtual machine. I use VMware's ESXi with two virtual switches, each connected to its own physical nic and to a nic inside my WANem virtual machine
After booting WANem, it asks you whether to configure all interface via DHCP - just say no
Press ESC to quit the Network Configuration wizard without configuring anything
When prompted, enter a password for the user perc
You are now in the WANem shell as denoted by the WANemControl@PERC prompt. Enter exit2shell to start a normal shell
Start the knx2hd program
Just press OK to acknowledge both dialogs named Initialisation of Knoppix-Installation
Now partition the hard disk. Select the desired hard disk by pressing the space bar and press Next
WANem does not need any swap space, so partition the hard disk manually
In cfdisk, select New to create a primary partition that covers the whole hard disk. Be sure to Write the new partition layout before you Quit cfdisk
Now select Configure Installation and press OK
For system type, choose debian which is selected by default
Select your newly created partition and press Next
As filesystem type, I recommend ext3
The installer creates an ordinary user so that there is no need for you to login as root. This is an useless step. So just enter your whole name
Enter your desired login name and press Next
Enter a password for that user and enter it again
Step 5 is important as you have to enter a password for the root user
Now enter the full qualified hostname for your WANem machine, eg. wanem.mydomain.intra
When asked where to install the bootloader, leave the default selection untouched to install it to the Master Boot Record
Select Start installation and press OK
Review the installation options and select and press Next
The installation process may last several minutes and ignore any warnings and errors
Just choose No when prompted for a floppy disk
Ok, WANem is installed to your hard disk now.
At the shell prompt, reboot the machine
When prompted, remove the WANem cd rom and press return
Now WANem boots from the hard drive
Login as root
Type exit2shell to launch a normal shell
To no longer use the WANem shell as your login shell, edit /root/.bash_profile and remove the line ./wanem.sh
Edit /etc/hosts. 127.0.0.1 should only be referenced by localhost. Add a new line that assigns the full qualified hostname and the short hostname of your WANem to its IP address, eg.:
```
192.168.0.20	wanem.mydomain.intra wanem
```
Edit /etc/resolv.conf and insert your nameservers, eg.:
```
nameserver 192.168.0.5
```
Edit /etc/network/interfaces and remove all lines below iface lo inet loopback
To start the WANem web frontend during boot, do a update-rc.d apache2 defaults
Start visudo and add the following line to /etc/sudoers:
```
www-data        ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
```
Note that this allows the user www-data to run any command as root user. As the Apache webserver runs as www-data, this might be a security risk.

Bridge setup

Edit /etc/network/interfaces and add the following lines:

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
        address 192.168.0.20
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 192.168.0.1
        bridge_ports all
        bridge_fd 0
        bridge_stp off

Routing setup

If for some reasons you have to run WANem as a router, do not add the above config regarding br0 to /etc/network/interfaces. Instead insert the following lines:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
	address 192.168.0.20
	netmask 255.255.255.0
	gateway 192.168.0.1

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
	address 192.168.1.20
	netmask 255.255.255.0