Hi,
I've been trying to test this idea a bit but I'm a bit concerned - does BATMAN only work with AdHoc wireless NICs?
no - its does not care about the lower layers. It will run on ad-hoc, managed, ethernet, etc ... Batman also runs on multiple interfaces. Simply supply several interfaces on the command line: batmand if1 if2 if3
I have a server with an Ethernet NIC with an IP 5.0.0.1/8. I've got a transparent AP bridge with an IP of 5.1.0.1/8 and normally I can ping it from my server.
Maybe this is due to an IP2 rule/route? I can see that this is due to a IP2 rule "from all to 5.0.0.0/8 lookup 67" and routes for table 67 is "unreachable default proto static"
Yes, the unreachable route may be the reason for that. Batman assumes that everything within its own IP range (5.0.0.1/8) should have a routing entry or the route does not exist. It lets you detect faster whether a node is down or not. Depending on your setup it may make sense to not have a route. Does the AP bridge (5.1.0.1/8) have a route back to your server ? If you want to integrate batmans routing decision into your fancy setup have a look here: https://dev.open-mesh.net/batman/wiki/RoutingVodoo
Marek