[Techtalk] Networking at home

Conor Daly conor.daly at oceanfree.net
Mon May 6 08:46:55 EST 2002


On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 06:44:29PM +0100 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
'Georgina' thought:
> Hi
> 
> Firstly, hi to all as this is my debut message to this list.  Its a
> pleasure to see a supportive community as I've seen here.
> 
> I'm looking for either a easy-to-read document on networking GNU/Linux
> and Windows 98SE, using the Linux box as the router with a 2.4.x kernel.
> Or perhaps, someone could suggest which script to scrutinice next after
> reading the following.
> 
> I'd tried to follow the Net-HOWTO but only got so far.  All I want to do
> is network two Windows 98SE machines to a Debian Woody GNU/Linux using a
> 2.4.18 kernel.  I want to use the Linux box to act as a router for the
> 98 machines i.e. allowing them to access the internet 
 
What you need is ipmasq and ipchains or iptables.  These allow you to set
up a firewall/router to service your network.  the Win9x machines only
need the IP of your linux box in the "gateways" tab of the networking
control panel.  You might want to set up a caching name server on the
linux box also (this will do the lookups for any of the machines and can
speed stuff up that bit).  The ipmasq and ipchains howtos provide some
pointers here.  I'm currently in the throes of setting up a masqing server
so I'll be revisiting this area myself quite soon.

> Currently, eth0 is the dhcp interface providing ntl broadband internet
> service.  A second nic eth1 is static and is stated as below in the
> /etc/network/interfaces file:
> 
> auto eth1
> iface eth1 inet static
> address 192.168.1.1
>         netmask 255.255.255.0
>         network 192.168.1.0
>         Broadcast Address       192.168.1.255
> 
> I've listed the three interfaces in the hosts file too:
> 
> 
> 127.0.0.1       localhost
> 192.168.1.1     debian.linux.windflower.home    debian.linux
> #192.168.1.2    desk-01.win98.windflower.home   desk-01.win98
> 192.168.1.3     stanford.win98.windflower.home  stanford.win98
> 
> Samba is installed and smbd and nmbd are started at boot up.  But I
> can't find a smb.conf so perhaps this is the problem.  Usually apt asks
> questions and creates such necessary files.  But if it is not configured
> surely its not stopping successful connections?

Samba is not required for routing to the internet or anything like that.
It's only function (In your setup) would be to provide disc space on the
debian machine to the Win9x boxes and to allow printing via a printer
hooked up to the debian machine.  If you don't wish to do either of those,
you don't need samba

> I can transfer files from one 98 machine to the other but I can't get
> them to see the Linux box thus can't gain access to the internet on
> those 98 machines.  I can ping the 98 machines from the Linux box
> successfully but I can't telnet into them.

Can you ping the linux box from the win98 boxes?  It so, you have a valid
connection and yo9u just need to set up the routing and masqing on the
linux box.  

masqing translates the IP address of the machine trying to
access the internet to the IP on the internet connection (ie the eth0 IP)
on outgoing packets and translates back to the internal IP for incoming
packets.  This allows multiple internal machines to access the internet
simultaneously (even if your ISP account says "only one host" since
there's only one host connected to the internet while the others are
connected to _that_ host).

Useful HOWTOs...

IP-Masquerade
IPCHAINS
Intranet-Server
SMB
Security

Conor (not in top form this morning...)
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
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