hello,
not doing very well at searching so apologies for the n00b question.

installed linux about 2 hours ago and done all the important stuff like changing the window manager to something more funky and playing with all the colours and making sure quake3 works but now i'm stuck.

i'm running mandrake 8.2 (partitioned with win98), have 2 network cards which it seems to have identified happily (d-link 530tx and realtek8139), but it's called the d-link 'rhine' for some reason.

have an adsl connection with a static ip address (alcatel speedtouch, that was confusing to set up..), my linux box and the windows machine's are all hooked up to the hub and can ping each other okay (except on the linux box, i put the d-link card in 'cause i thought i'd need 2 cards and i can't ping that one 'cause it's not plugged into the network).

have been on google for the last 1/2 hour trying to suss what i need to do next to be able to have all the windows machines and the linux box able to see each other and the internet with the linux one as the server.

think i need to sort:

• firewall
• some sort of proxying called ip masquerading?
• samba file server so the windows boxes can see each other and linux folders that are defined for sharing.

can anyone recommend a good HOWTO(s), preferably one that's geared toward people that lazy and impatient in equal measure.

i've found loads but some have said i can't run the firewall and smb on the same box and some have said i need 2 network cards rather than one and i r confused...

help much appreciated

4days

A static IP is a good thing. That means you do not necessarily have to set up DHCP. Take a look at ftp://griffon26.kfk4ever.com/pub/SIP..._MXstream.html if you want to set up your ADSL modem this way.
Note that this will also require you to change your windows networking settings to use a static IP. If you want to do this, you might want to get things to work in Windows first.

This is done by iptables for kernels 2.4.x. How to do it is described in the IP masquerading howto (search for it on the net).

You can do that later.

That's nonsense.

That is true, but you said you already have 2 network cards in the linux box, right? What's so confusing about it?