i'm running vector linux soho 5.0.1 under kde 3.4 and have tried desperately to understand iptables, ipchains, and the like but i am terribly lost. at the moment i manage iptables with guarddog, which works fine. i have this computer connected to a win98 machine via cat5 crossover. they can ping eachother but that's it. i haven't config'd samba or anything because i don't think i really need to since i do no file/print sharing. i have an app called guidedog which has something to do with ip forwarding but i didn't really understand it. is there a guide or tutorial that i can go by to set this machine up as a proxy server so that the win98 machine can access the internet through it?

hhhmmm first thing is I would recommend a more main stream distro for you.

if you need a proxy you download squid and access it through the windows machine on port 3128.

However, I would not recommend it for you... if you are struggling with ipchains etc, it will be compromised quickly.

IF you need a proxy, choose a mainstream distro and use the graphical tools for firewalls and proxies. This will give you more time to learn the fine details.

Regards
Richard

my first distro was redhat 9 and i used it for about a year until it went enterprise. since then i've used mandrake, all 3 cores of fedora, and ubuntu. yes, i used their front ends for proxy config but those didn't teach me anything. it was all point and click. the reason why i've been using vector now for quite some time is because i feel that i need to learn more about how the OS works. i've never had to manually deal with iptables up until now. i have heard about squid and was told to stay way from it. i think i've come to the conclusion that all i really can do is force myself to learn how iptables/ipchains works by viewing examples along with trial and error.

Hi!

I bought a book named "SQUID" where the administration of a proxy is good described, but i think it´s only available in german language. The author is Dirk Dithardt and its published by "dpunkt.verlag". I don´t know if an english translation is available.

Bye

Caruso

there are lots of documents on the internet. u can start with
www.netfilter.org --> iptables ipchains
www.squid-cache.org

i use squid (transparent)+ squidguard + iptables. u can prefer dansguardian.org instead of squidguard. squidguard and dansguardian are good to block unwanted porn warez addware sites.

slackware is good fast and simple distro. u can try it if u really want to learn linux OS. it doesnt have almost any tool to configure system.

i use centos 4 (build from source rpms of RHEL 4).

good luck.

thanks maxut, i'll check out all of those. i found an app called tinyproxy that worked perfectly fine but it only supports http