[Nottingham] Setup on the main PC *nearly* worked.... couple of problems...

[David Aldred]

Hello, all!

Peter & I installed Mandrake 10 on my 'main' machine last night - the 
one which (back under Windows) I'm typing on now.  This is the one with 
the dial-up connection on it, so is the one on which things need to run 
properly!

To avoid any complications with dual-boot until we knew things would 
work, we installed on a separate 8Gb drive, with the Windows drive 
disconnected.  Dual boot the hard way - open the machine and reconnect 
things....

It nearly worked.  The actual basic install went like a dream, Mandrake 
identified the attached printer without me having to do anything, and 
presented the wireless connection for configuration on first boot.  It 
also identified and installed the connexant winmodem.  (Interestingly, 
although the Linuxant site says that this will only run at 14.4k until 
it's paid for and registered, it ran at 56k).  So far I haven't got as 
far as testing the scanner, Palm and digicam connections, but I'm not 
anticipating any issues.

So, we have wireless networking working - with a query.  With an 
Internet firewall set up to deny access to anything from 'outside', even 
a ping across the internal network (192.168.0.x) won't work, which was 
not what I was expecting.  The same is the case with everything except 
ping requests blocked - that surprised me even more.  Remove the 
firewall and it will ping quite happily.  Is this what should happen?

Incidentally, the wireless network seems far more stable under Linux 
than under Windows.  The roughly two-hourly unplugging and re-plugging 
of the wireless dongle from the main machine to resurrect the connection 
was no longer necessary!

We also had the Internet available, on the main machine.  We used kppp 
to get it going, and could browse the web using Konqueror.


Now the problem.  I had thought that with a working net connection and 
being able to ping the network machines (albeit with the firewall 
disabled, not ideal but something to come back to), I should be able to 
use the Internet from the other networked machines - but that simply 
didn't work - the laptop (also under Linux) couldn't ping anything 
outside the local network, by IP address or name.

We then tried the Internet Connection Sharing icon in the Mandrake 
configuration software - this is where things really went badly wrong. 
Went through the process, it said it was setting up scripts etc, then 
just sat there.  After several minutes of just sitting there, the 
machine ground to a halt - the mouse had been becoming gradually less 
responsive.  Ctrl-alt-backspace killed the X-server, but the resultant 
console wouldn't take keyboard input.  Big switch time.

Started Linux again.  Now the network is dead - reconfigured the 
wireless card and it works again.  No such luck with KPPP - the modem 
responds with 'busy' every time, even though it isn't (there's no 
activity on the phone line).  Any attempt to configure the modem leads 
to the configuration module freezing.  Even switching off, leaving for 
five minutes, and switching on again doesn't help - KPPP still reports 
the modem as busy.

Change over the hard drives, and Windows can find and handle the modem, 
so at least it's not fried hardware, and I can post a help request 
without going to an Internet cafe!


I suspect the combination of the linmodem driver and whatever Mandrake 
does to set up internet connection sharing is a lethal one.  So: two 
questions arise from last night:

- is there any (easy) way of setting up internet sharing without using 
the "wizard" approach?

- Can I have a firewall, internet sharing and internal pings all at 
once, preferably with static IP addressing on the internal network (I 
just prefer to know the numbers for each machine to help trace any 
network issues)?


Oh, and any recommendations for Linux virus checking?


(Incidentally, I see that Windows latest 'security SP2 for XP' kills 
Symantec anti-virus.  Nice to know things are all going as well as usual 
at Gatesville :-)
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|\avid Aldred   / David at familyaldred.org.uk  \   Nottingham, England
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