Sharing adsl with Redhat linux

[Rickdog]

Why does it have to be so confoundedly doggone hard to share internet connections with RH 7.3 or 8.0? I have been trying to do this off and on for close to a year now (starting with RH 7.1 then 7.2) and have not been successful. As common as this kind of request is ( internet sharing), you'd think that Redhat would write up an RPM for internet connection sharing or something so you could just install the dang thing, run a setup gui, and use the internet connection through your Linux box to a switching hub and what ever computers are on the LAN. I just don't get it. :confused:

Oh, BTW, I have used the network device configuration, etc in RH 7.3 and 8.0, I have even been able to ping between my Windows XP box and RH box, but whenever I try to open a site with the XP box, the server cannot be found error comes up, no connection. I have tried static IP's, DHCP, nothing works, except Windows will share to my Linux box.

[cyberhwk]

the easiest way to do it is get a dlink router that assigns dhcp. That is the way my house is hooked up. The router also has a firewall built it. :D its cool.

[Rickdog]

I have a Linksys BEFSR41 router so I have plenty of ISP connections in my house. I just wanted to be able to use the NICs in my Linux box to share the internet connection with another pc or notebook if I wanted to, but it seems that it is not a very easy thing to do with Redhat linux.

[ahodgson]

This example assumes that eth0 is the device connected to your ADSL, and eth1 is the network device connected to your internal network.

Add the following lines to the end of your /etc/rc.d/rc.local

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING \
-o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

.. and make sure your internal systems specify the address of the linux box as their default router on the internal network.

Also run those commands as root from the shell or reboot to make them take effect.

[Rickdog]

Alan, thanks for the tips, I will try it tonight and post again on how it worked. Rickdog

[AndrewBeaton]

Why not install FIRESTARTER

Its a firewall and automatically sets up Internet Connection Sharing for your LAN.

http://firestarter.sourceforge.net/

I use an older version (0.8.3) and it works perfectly.


Regards,

Andrew Beaton
Alcatel Speedtouch USB Guide (http://www.andrewbeaton.co.uk/speedtouch) FIRESTARTER (http://firestarter.sourceforge.net)

[Rickdog]

Thanks Andrew, I will check it out. I did find some impressive looking scripts at www.linuxathome.net that should have gotten my connection going, but I still must have something misconfigured. During boot up I still see the ipchains loading when the script should activate iptables, so maybe the problem is that ipchains needs to be removed.

I somehow managed to crash :( the BEFSR41 Linksys router, it won't even go to the setup page. Luckily I have a cheap 4 port switching hub that I can use to do ICS from an XP Pro box until I finally get the Linux workstation to share to all the other boxes. All the port scanning sites tried have claimed my IP is invisible so the XP Pro box will do for now. BTW, how does the FIRESTARTER firewall do on the security tests?Tnx agn, Rick

[AndrewBeaton]

Well I ran almost every online security check I could find (stealth, trojan, tcp, udp etc) and it passed every single one of them.

I also got a friend to portscan me and it didnt come up with anything that it shouldnt have.

I use Nortan Internet Security on my windows box, and although its not as advanced / detailed it blocks everything the same.


You could always try it and get your network up and running and upgrade later .. if youll need to ;)