Linux for Home Networking

[mpickett]

Hi everyone,

I recently installed Mandrake Linux 8.2 and am brand new to linux. I really like the ease of general home use for different things like surfing the web and checking email, but the reason I switched was really to gain more powerful networking options. What I want to do is to have one computer connected to a cable internet connection which shares that connection to 3 other computers and enables file sharing between those computers. I don't really know a whole lot about networking or servers as you don't need to for Windows, and I was hoping that this could be more of a learning experience than anything else considering I can do what I want with Windows. Anyway, my question is where do I start the process of learning how to set this up? I have done some preliminary research and it seems to me that I should use samba for networking and squid for connection sharing. Is that the route I should go down? Any help for a super newbie trying to learn about networking is much appreciated!!

Thanks
Matt Pickett

[Infrastructure]

Hello Matt,

You have two choices when it comes to using a computer for sharing your internet connection for your other computers. Either you install a full distribution like Mandrake (contains a Internet connection sharing function) or you dedicate this computer as a linux router. There are many special Linux distributions that only acts like routers/firewalls. A list can be found:

here (http://www.routerdesign.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&l_op=viewlink&cid=9)

Anyway, the router computer needs at least two network cards. One which is connected to the internet and one that is connected to a hub. The computers that are sharing the internet connection is then connected to the hub.

I'm using this router/firewall distribution:

Smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org)

It's easy to install, just download a ISO file, burn it on a CD-ROM and boot it in the computer. It's easy to administrate (webinterface) and the people who makes it are fast to distribute patches when new security problems are found in the software. This distribution also includes Squid for web caching, a DHCP server to assign IP adresses to the computers on your network and a lot other features that I'm to lazy to mention now :D

The problem with the router distros is that they usually are stripped of as much software as possible. This makes them more secure - less software = less chance of security holes. But this also makes them inflexible because you can run into problems if you want to install more software. Like, in your case Samba for sharing files between Windows and Linux.

Here's som links that might help you set up Samba:

http://us1.samba.org/samba/ftp/docs/htmldocs/Samba-PDC-HOWTO.html

http://www.freeos.com/articles/3842/

http://k-lug.org/doclib/Samba_Cookbook.pdf

If you want to share files between Linux computers you should look into the:

Network File System (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO/)

This link might also help you understand networking in Linux:

Configuring TCP/IP under Linux (http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/linux-onlinecourse-bytitle/F70061C28055BCBB86256AF5006EAE95?OpenDocument)

And this guide might come in handy if your lost in Linux:

Transitioning from Windows to Linux (http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-faq/)

Good luck :)

[mpickett]

Thanks for the info, Infrastructure! I have a feeling that I am about to embark on quite a journey here.

Matt

[Infrastructure]

I'm sure it will work out great, just be patient and read alot. I don't think there's any other operating system that is so well documented on the internet.

Good luck :D

BTW, I just thought of this old link, it might help you:

http://willware.net:8080/linuxNetwork.html