Mandrake 10. Networking vs W98.
This info may be of some help. to others. It should also serve as warning and hopefully a wake up call for Linux 'providers'.

I have a lot of experience as a Unix and Windows user, but not a lot in setting up systems from scratch.

I am trying to configure a machine with two ethernet addresses to act as a firewall using MDK10.0 CE.
First try used a PCI card, and an ISA (3com) card for LAN interfaces. I could not get the drivers (tulip and 3com) to properly recognize two different card types. Too much hassle with IRQ's etc. eventually went out and bought a second PCI card.
FIRST GOTCHA!!. When the second PCI card was installed, MDK renamed the first card from eth0 to eth1. The new card was now eth0. Since I had dhcp set up on one and static IP set up on the other, all networking which used to work, did not work anymore.

MDK BUG. The GUI that shows the internet cards has an entry: Position on PCI Bus. Of course it is left empty by MDK.

Eventually figured out what was gong on by reading BIOS and dmesg output.

MDK BUG. Tried to rename eth0 to eth1 and vice versa. MDK will not let me. Eventually gave up and just swapped the LAN cables.

Now I can talk to the internet, but all the firewalling and internal networking doesn't work.

Spent the rest of the day trying to troubleshoot this.
No luck. Several hours of internet search later, tried to manually vi-edit the shorewall rules. Shorewall kept giving errors, about bad IPTABLES commands.
More research on the net. Found advice to uninstall shorewall that came with mandrake, and install a new one.

Went to MDK package mgr GUI and found that shorewall was version 1.4.7
Went to shorewall site and downloade version 2.0.1 from the MDK10 subdirectory.

Uninstalled 1.4.7 using gui. Tried to install 2.0.1 using gui. Dependency errors. Says that it needs iproute.

MDK gui shows no iproute packages on the system.

Downloaded iproute. Tried to install it. Get message that it exists already on the system.

Revert to cmd line. rpm reports that the 'file' ip, is provided by package iproute2.

MDK BUG. Mdk pak mgr gui shows no iproute2 installed on the system.
use cmd line to rebuild rpm database. same result. MDK gui ignorant of iproute, or iproute2.

Tried to install shorewall2.0.1 from cmd line. Fails on dependency.
after an hour or three, do an install with --nodeps.
It succeeds.
MDK gui now reports that shorewall 2.0.1 is on the system.
Now that firewall is back, visit shorewall site. Go to documentation. Find a page that explains that some distros use iproute and some iproute2 for package names. Recommends using --nodeps option if necessary to force the install. NOW THEY TELL ME. (Question for shorewall author: If you know this, and you are providing a directory labelled Mandrake10 from which to get shorewall package would it not be a good idea to make that package work with MDK10? Failing that would it not be a good idea to put a README file in the MDK10 directory?)

Shorewall does not seem to have any config tool, but they do have some very nice example files for zones, interfaces, rules, etc.
Following the examples, use vi to edit the config files.
Stop and start shorewall.
It works OK. Windows machines behind the Linux FW can browse the net.
The net cannot see them.
Windows machines can access http on the linux box, as can the Internet users.
All is OK, Except the RedHat 6.1 box on the same subnet. I cannot get it to ping or otherwise see the mdk box. Oh well it is not a priority.

So now after a HUGE investment in time I have a mandrake box that can communicate with the external intenet and share that connection with internal windows boxes.
I do not have any apps running, OpenOffice working, a database, a mail client, etc. etc.
Have not started to configure Apache, or mail server.
Have not fine tuned the shorewall rules to allow me to ssh, or ftp etc.
Lots of work yet to do, but the very basic basics seem to be working.
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Just for comparaison here is my experience at installing W98 a day after this two week (and counting) Mandrake episode:
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Yesterday I built a computer from scratch. (Well OK I had case, P/S and mobo.) Added floppy, disk, cd, cd-r/w, and memory. Then added W98. Then added all drivers from the mobo CD (LAN, sound, AGP etc.) Then W98 UPDATE CD Feb 2004. Then added virus scan and personal firewall. Then added MS OFFICE, then added a couple of games.
All running and networked to other W98 machines within a couple of hours. Sound works. display works. games work. Ms-Office works. Ms-Access works. Networking works.
DID NOT HAVE TO:
a) visit web sites looking for answers to questions.
b) fight with networking.
c) fight with office or database.
d) fix distribution CD by uninstalling packages, and downloading updated versions.
e) manually edit config files with notepad.

Linux on the desktop? I don't think so. Even Linux as a server has a long way to go.
I like Open source and I support the concept. But I have other things to do with my life besides debug other people's code.
Greg M.

When I dont stray too far from the default install, I personally havent had that much difficulty in installing Mandrake Linux 10.0, even though I'm a newbie in this area.

It does seem very much a case of "your mileage may vary".
Still, Mandrake Linux is just one distro.

shit man, its amazing what you have to do to protect a windows box, all that hard work... :whistle:

but do you also want linux to be a "point n clicks" OS?

At this point I am primarily interested in Linux for what it can do for me.
I am willing to invest some time in learning how to use it properly, whether point and click or cmd line, but I am not willing to invest a whole bunch of time in debugging it (not the kernel but the other pieces of the Linux based solution). I have other things I want to do more.
If there were proper procedures to follow that used only cmd line, then that would be fine, although somewhat obsolete.
But look at what I had to 'know/guess/figure out', in order to get this to work; (yes there are docs, but once you know which man page to print you are already half way to the answer).
1) BIOS 2) dmesg 3) rpm cmd line options 4) IP addressing and netmasks 5)vi editor 6) some inkling that there are a bunch of 'magic' files in /etc/sysconfig etc. that might be useful, and others I have prob forgotten.

All of this before I can start using Linux for what I want to use it for: Firewall and webhosting.
Is this really necessary? I could just use XP with Personal Firewall and Internet conncection sharing. Load in Apache and start the fun stuff. Sure it would cost me a couple of hour$$ pay, but that is much much less than what the 'mostly free' Linux solution has cost me.
If I were not totally opposed to XP that would probably be my best option. It may yet turn out to be my only option if I cant get the Linux solution working with a reasonable investment of time and effort.

Its not the actual 'install' of MDK10 that takes the time. Sure you run in the CD's and you can then log in and run file manager. Whoopee!!. But try to get it to do some useful work. That is another story.

Yes it is. But it is the distro widely recommended as being the easiest to start with. I tried Gentoo first, but I could never get the right set of options chosen because I did not know enough.
I wanted a distro that I would not have to upgrade for at least a couple of years. (I am still happily running W98.) I wanted a distro that was reasonably complete where I had some expectation that all the packages would work together. I have been burned too many times in the Unix world where you run into the following scenario:
Want application A.
App A exists but in needs library B.
Lib B exists but not in binary form for your O/S. You need to compile first.
Lib B needs version Z of make, bison and YaK. You only have version X.
You dont have yak at all. You need bison to run in order to build yak.
To build version X of bison you need glibc version G. But you only have version F.
and on and on and on.
No thank you.
So the question is which distro to use? RedHat has walked away from the individual user, and I don't know how 'integrated' the Suse and Debian distros are.
Mandrake was SUPPOSED to be well thought out and reasonably straightforward to actually use (not just to install) so I went with that.
Is there a better choice? I am open.

imo i'd say you'd have better luck with slackware