Traverse Viking PCI ADSL card + MONOWALL

I now have one of these cards in a Soekris net5501, in a nice case supplied by Wim at kd85.com ...
(click on image to enlarge):-

The PCI ADSL card presents a virtual Ethernet port, and you can use it as a router or an RFC1483 Bridge.
 
The Soekris board runs the Monowall firewall appliance distribution from Compact Flash.  So the whole thing uses very little power, has no moving parts, and avoids the need for a separate ADSL modem and power supply.

The first thing to know about using the Viking ADSL card with Monowall is that you need to use the GENERIC build of Monowall, not the EMBEDDED build.   This is because the EMBEDDED build is missing the device driver re(4) for the virtual NIC (RealTek 8139C+) which the Viking card presents to you.  This is OK, as the GENERIC build works happily on a CompactFlash card in the Soekris, and it still supports the Soekris serial console.

Configuring the Viking card was a bit of a challenge.  It has a serial console port on some jumpers, but I don't yet have all the bits to make up the right cable.  It offers TELNET and HTTP config options, but in Monowall under PPPoE you don't get IP access to the card (only PPPoE).

You can access the TELNET and HTTP management services from Monowall's LAN interface if you take the ADSL link offline.  Change the WAN port from PPPoE to a static IP (192.168.1.2 say).  This won't work unless you have either enabled NAT in Monowall (temporarily untick the box marked 'Advanced Outbound NAT'), or you have previously configured a default gateway on the ADSL card (e.g. 192.168.1.2).  Otherwise, the ADSL card won't know how to route management traffic back to you.

For initial config of the ADSL card, the easiest thing is to make sure your Monowall has NAT enabled ( 'Advanced Outbound NAT' unticked), and then set up a the 'vr0' port as 192.168.1.2/24.  Then we can access the device via TELNET or HTTP, even though the device doesn't have a default gateway for us.

For use as a PPPoE device in Monowall, the following commands enable the device to work on a standard BT 20CN ADSL line in the UK, setting the device up as a bridge instead of a router.  (These commands assume that you're starting from the default factory configuration, which can be restored by using a jumper as described in the documentation.)

telnet 192.168.1.1

Escape character is '^]'.

                ,vvvdP9P???^   ,,,
              vvd###P^`^         vvvvv v
         vv#####?^                  ????####vv,
      vv####??     ,vvvdP???^  ,,,        ??##^
     v#####?    ,vvd##P?^        #?#v#vvv
   v#####?    v###P^    ,vvv,        '?#?,
  ######?   ####?^ ,vd#P?^     `???##
  #####?   v####  ,d##P^           ''
 ######   v####  ]###L                   _   _          _                  ___
 #####?   v####  ]##L                   /   / \  |\ |  |_  \/   /\   |\ |   |
 ######    ####  ]###L                  \_  \_/  | \|  |_  /\  /--\  | \|   |
 ?#####v   ####v  ]##h,            ,,
  ?#####    ?###h,  `9#hv,     ,vv###
    ######    #####L    ]###L        ,v#v'
    ?#####vv    ?9##hv,        ,,vvvv###'
       ?#####vv     `??9P\vv,   ^         vv##,
          ######                       #######L
            ??###hvv,          ,vvv#?##?????
                `????9hdhvv,

Login: admin
Password: *****

Login successful 

--> ip delete interface ipwan 

--> bridge add interface br0 

--> bridge attach br0 ethernet 

--> rfc1483 add transport tr1 a1 0 38 llc bridged 

--> bridge add interface br1 

--> bridge attach br1 tr1 

--> system config save

In Monowall, under "Interfaces", we just set the WAN interface to be 're0' (a RealTek RTL8139C), and set the Interface Type to be PPPoE.   Then just enter your ADSL login name and password into Monowall under "Interfaces: WAN", "PPPoE configuration".

Hope this helps someone ;-)