Ponderings on vlans

I was experimenting with VLANs on the RPi over the weekend.  So far, I learned that you can implement a tagged VLAN in the 802.1q sense by installing the vlan library and adding the 8021q loaded modules to /etc/modules.  Lots of good hints here (thanks, San Bergmans).

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlan
sudo modprobe 8021q
sudo su
sudo echo "8021q" >> /etc/modules 
exit

I also plugged in a USB to Ethernet adapter into the powered Hub on my RPi and started adding vlan ports to the /etc/network/interfaces file.  I am not sure how this will play out on the setup that I am using.  I do have to reset the managed router to access the new vlans on a port that the vlans will access.  I also need to make sure that my /etc/network/interfaces file has the correct mac address for the adapter so that it will come up as eth1 when it is plugged in.

I really didn't get too much of a chance to try it out because of other commitments and I was moving all of my media circuits to a separate vlan through the house.  I grabbed the router that I was using for connecting the RPis to the external FIOS network to reuse for the media vlan.  I first setup the router with a different subnet, connected it to the outside circuit, then proceeded to reset all of the media components to the new vlan.  Finally, I plugged the LAN part of the router into a managed switch on the new vlan and rebooted all of the media elements.  The only problem that I had was resetting the Ceton Echo to authenticate to my Windows Media Center at its new IP.

I am anxious to get back to the house tonight to tryout my connections to the other vlans within the house.  More later.

Trying to resolve a standard interface bootup structure

I have been trying over last weekend to get my setup to come up with the hostapd and dhcp server running along with x11vnc running and showing display :0.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes I have to log into the RPi to start something that didn't catch the first time.  There may be some timing issues here.

I want to be able to simply plug in the RPi with hub and peripherals and have it come up so that I can connect my iPad 2 both at home and at work.  Since there is a wi-fi proxy at work, with a capture page, this presents an unusual issue that needs to be resolved.  At work, I have to open up a browser, then enter in a username and password (which changes every two weeks or so) before I can get an internet connection.  At home, I have a wireless router which uses a standard form of encryption - that one is easy to get connected to.  However, going between each environment has its issues.  Solving this issue is the first one that I will need to solve in order to automate the standard interface on new SD cards as I use them.  If I can just mount a USB stick and run a script on a new SD card to setup the interface that would be nice.  Instead, I find myself having to go around the issue and log in a different way to get my setup the way that I want.  More on this later.

Update: I should probably turn this idea into a standard script to be runnable off of a usb stick.  That way, I can use the stick to setup a standard setup prior to modifying the setup for anything else.