Ok I'm going to start by apologizing right of the bat here for any stupid questions I may pose. I'm trying to setup a home network, using a linux box (Suse 9.1) as my gateway directly connected to my cable modem. I'm using a second NIC in the linux box to connect to a wireless router which connects all of my win xp boxes, some wired some not, as well as statically assigns IP's. The linux box will have a firewall on it, and I want to run a FTP server from the linux box, as well as samba services so that I can easily put files on the FTP server from the windows machines. I would also like to have access to the internet from the xp machines. I'm pretty sure that this is going to require routing port forwarding and a whole host of other things to be setup and configured. Does anybody have any advice on setting this all up and places to look for documentation that explains it all in very small words?

Thanks for the help,
Dobkijk

A general rule of thumb is that you want to run as few services as possible on your firewall box. Each service you enable is a possible entry to someone with bad intent.

Other than that piece of advice, there are lots of how-tos on the net for each of the tasks that you are proposing. To make your project really interesting, you might consider bypassing the wireless router - instead of putting in a second wired NIC put in a wireless NIC and set your Linux box up as your access point.

masquerading is the keyword you are looking for. If you can, get an el cheapo old PC from the flea market and make that one the router. NOT your box that you use to host files. Ideally, run no services (except perhaps firewalled sshd if you have to log in from the outside) on the router. It's just too dangerous, especially samba and ftp that you mention. For cable modem bandwidths, any old 400+MHz thing will do.

Have fun,
mlp