By the way, this isn't a Fedora issue per se... It appears to me to be a specific kernel update issue, which the NetLock vendor simply hasn't kept up-to-date with. It stopped working for me at the same time as some changes to 'skbuff.h' that went in with 2.4.22 in the base (non-Redhat-modified) kernel, when running a custom kernel with RH9.
Looking around at the time, I found that the 'skbuff' data structure changed in 2.4.22 and beyond when a new structure definition
struct net_device *real_dev;
was inserted in the MIDDLE of the existing sk_buff structure, displacing anything (e.g., various control structures) that lay beyond that point in the original skbuff structure. The binary-only portion of the Netlock client naturally would not have spontaneously changed itself at the same time, so it would be using now-invalid offsets within the skbuff structure when *it* tries to manipulate these buffers.
So, the compilable "shim" for the Netlock client still compiled ok, but it isn't the only part of the VPN client. At bootup time, if the
binary Netlock client modules were loaded (need not actually be in use) I'd get a mess of "No more skbuff" messages within a minute or two, followed by failure. I dropped back to a 2.4.21 kernel and it works happily with that... even now on Fedora.
Looking at NetLock's (now Apani's) web site, their most recent release (3.0 at the start of this year) of the product is said to work with RH9 and Suse 8.2. The more recent version of Suse (9.0) is NOT listed as supported, and since its supplied kernel version includes that same update to skbuff.h, I am not surprised. Hopefully someone at Apani
is planning to recompile the binary-only portion of their code with a more recent kernel someday.
Chuck R.
Charles,
Thank you for the most insightful explanation of the issue I've seen yet. Have you sent your findings to support@xxxxxxxxx? I was testing their beta versions of what is now 3.0 and I had very similar failures on FC1, RHEL3 and SUSE 9. I did come to find that changes in GNOME are what kept me from logging in under FC1. RHEL3 would kernel panic.
I'm gonna follow your lead and try a generic 2.4.21 kernel and see if I get any better luck. Eventually I think I'll end up using RHEL3 because that's the direction the apps developers where I work are heading.
Apani claims they're about to release beta code for FC1, RHEL3 and SUSE 9. I saw other posts that indicated a finished product would be available by May.
Shannon McMackin mcmackin@xxxxxxxxxxx
