I am setting up a network at home: q
2X Linux boxes (Mandrake 9q.2)
1X Windows XP

I can ping Linux1 to Linux2, but cannot ping Linux2 to Linux1. Both machines can ping the gateway and I can access the external network from both. Neither can ping the Windows machine, but I am not really concerned about this... yet. On Linux2 I can ping itself (127.0.0.1). I am not sure what I set up differntly. I am using static IPs and I am pinging IPs (although I think I have /etc/hosts the way it needs to be).

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Do you have a firewall set up on Linux1 that is blocking ICMP traffic?

All the computers need to have IP addresses that are in the same subnet, this means for a typical home user that the first three numbers, the 192.168.0 part, are the same.

All of them also need the same subnet mask, most likely 255.255.255.0

In Linux it is also possible to set the wrong broadcast address, to over simplify it, the broadcast address is the IP address with a 255 where the subnet is 0:

192.168.000.001 IP address
255.255.255.000 subnet mask
-------------------------------------
192.168.000.255 broadcast

Also when you said one computer could ping itself you used 127.0.0.1 which is a loopback address, can you also ping the IP address you set for that computer?

If your computers have IP addresses starting with 192.168 or 10 they are in what is called private IP space which means the router hides them from The Internet, so if you can't get it working run ifconfig (ipconfig in windows) and post the IP address, subnet mask, broadcast address and default gateway for all the computers)

btmiller,

That was it! I was not allowing "Mail Server" & "POP & IMAP server". I am not sure which of these was blocking ICMP, but it definitely gets me interested in looking under the hood on all the Security settings. Thanks much!

cmacklin

Darin,

Thanks for your reply as well. This forum definitely makes things a bit more efficient.

Thanks,

Cliff