Hi folks.

I am trying to set up a single boot computer with Debian linux. I don't know what version of Debian it is, but the kernel is 2.6.25-1 (I had to recompile it twice, so it's not the original kernel).

The computer is an old IBM NetVista about 2000 vintage (it originally had Windows ME on it). It has 256 MB of RAM, 20GB hard drive and two D-Link network cards. I am hoping to eventually set it up as a squid proxy server and squidGuard web filter for my work.

I was able to get online at work on my LAN, with a hardware router doing the DHCP and DNS. I was not able to connect to the Internet on another computer going through that one (i.e. eth0 and eth1 were not talking to each other.) so with that in mind I brought the computer home to work on it.

At home I have a DSL modem (NOT a modem/router), a hub, and some ethernet cables. I have connected eth0 to the DSL modem and eth1 to the hub.

Problem. I can't seem to get DSL working on the Linux machine. when I look in the menus, there is no option to set up the Internet connection, only a Network option that allows me to specify the properties of each card (static or dynamic IP, hostname, subnet mask, etc).

I have another Ubuntu computer that uses the pon program. This computer does not seem to have it.

So I need help on two things.

1. Get the DSL working on this thing
2. Figure out how to get eth1 and eth0 talking, so I can connect to the Internet from another computer through the Debian box. I know it has to do with iptables, but I've set everything to accept and set the nat and forwarding and it still didn't work.

which desktop is used?

Sorry, Gnome is the desktop. It is the one that came with the Debian installation.

Firuged out the first part. I didn't have the packages ppp, pppoe and pppoeconf installed. I had to get them from http://packages.debian.org. I figured out I have Debian Etch by doing apt-get on my system (which of course, failed, becauase I wasn't connected to the Internet) and that told me which dependencies I needed to install. I was able to download them from a Windows machine onto a memory stick and install them that way.

I'm just looking for a good howto for newbies on how to get my LAN and the Internet talking to each other.