[Wylug-help] internet connection sharing question

[Anne Wilson]

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On Saturday 14 Aug 2004 10:30, C.Mackins at Bradford.ac.uk wrote:
> Hi Anne,
>
>
> Not got to the lan!  Everything lights up like a christmas tree, showing
> the connection is up and running; and cables from PCs to Router are
> connected and lighting up on the cards and on the router. In this respect,
> all seems ok.
>
That  has to be sorted first.  Without that you can't do anything with the
router, IMO.

> Unfortunately, I'm not able to connect to the default address via browser -
> so I can't configure or get internet access (can'r display web pages).
> I've been reading up and it seems that the Mandrake internet/sharing
> wizards can be a problem.

Some say so, but I've never found them problematic.

> I also need to set up for DHCP before hand. I
> did actually once get a connection, but somehow managed to lose it and
> couldn't get it back so I did a clean install - a couple of times
> now.(which shows the kit is at least working and the problem is likelty to
> be a config issue).
>
Not sure what you mean by that.  Do you just mean that you get your ip from
your isp, or do you mean that you want dhcp for all the boxes on the lan?
Two different things, and have to be sorted separately.  FWIW I have always
found that on a small lan like ours setting the boxes to static ips makes
life a lot simpler - different of course in very large lans, but that's not
our concern ;-)

> My concern is, this  as is time consuming - which in itself is OK -
> however, until I am able to resolve this, with all the lights on and
> showing activity - is my system in any way vulnerable - until I can get to
> the default address and configure my connection to the internet?
>
I think it's highly unlikely, Chris.  For a start, the lights are flashing
because attempts at connection are being made, but the router is saying that
it doesn't recognise them as being part of the lan it is to control - at
least that's how it seems to me.  If that's so, there is no possibility of
anything getting in or out until you have a lan sorted.  After that, the
inbuilt firewall defaults should be enough to protect you if you have no need
to be a server for any services.

Try the static ip route.  Make sure that every box on the lan has the same
group set - xxx.xxx.xxx.??? where the x means the same bit.  Mask is
255.255.255.0.  It must be the same x setting as your router uses, usually
192.168.0 or 192.168.1.  Then try to ping the boxes from each other.

Check also that /etc/hosts has not only a localhost entry, but an entry for at
least your own box, ip number followed by fqdn and short-name  eg

192.168.0.30 anne at myboxname.network.net anne

It's useful to have the other boxes in there, but we'll deal with that later.

Anne
- --
Registered Linux User No.293302
Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet?
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