Help! Network woes on SuSE 8.1
 

I am trying to run a gateway/router/firewall in SuSE 8.1 for my little home network. Currently, we share a cable modem between 2 windows machines (ewww). The problem is: I cant get the linux machine online at all. The network cards are installed and are working. I set eth0 up as dhcp for the cable modem, and eth1 as 192.168.0.1/24 to feed the hub for the network. The farthest I have gotten is the 2 network cards will ping eachother, but will not pass traffic outside the local machine. I am hoping to compile apache and run services above and beyond just a router on this machine; but obviously the first step is getting it online. Is there something I am missing??

Sound like it might be a problem with NAT, but I think we would need more specifics in order to help. If I'm reading you right, you have an external NIC (WAN) set as DHCP, and then an internal NIC (LAN) set to 192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0 that will be doing NAT with the 2 windows machines. Did you set up your routing rules manually? Did you specify that the internal card will do NAT (err, IP Masquerade)?

Any more specifics that you can provide would be helpful.

slight

Before I concern myself with the internal network, I need to have an external interface working. I thought all I would have to do would be plug in the cable modem to eth0, and set that device to dhcp. This is apparently not the case. Can anyone tell me step by step how to set up a cable modem in SuSE? I know this seems like a 'super-noob' problem...argh!
Thanks to slightcrazed and anyone else, in advance, who might be able to help.

Ahhh..... I misunderstood your first post.

Have you done all of the usual troubleshooting stuff to start with? Ping 127.0.0.1, Ping localhost, ping a website by IP? Have you run ifconfig and checked all of the settings? Is the NIC active?

It certainly doesn't seem like a 'Super-Noob' problem. Infact, NIC and modem problems seem to crop up quite frequently, even for experienced users. Run though all the basic trouble shooting stuff, and report back what works and what doesn't and we'll try to narrow down the issue.

slight

I think I may have found something. I have checked my ifconfig against one on a friend's SuSe machine that is up and running on the net. Everything matches except one line...
Known working:
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1

Mine (not working):
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

These are both from eth0 on their respective machines. The difference being that multicast is on in mine. I am trying to figure out how to turn off multicast, and not having a whole lot of luck. Anyone know the command string to turn off multicast? Or am I just way off? Either way, a better understanding of exactly how to interpret the usage of commands when I do something like:
man ifconfig
...would do me a world of good!
naught

This is the output from my RedHat 8.0 after running ifconfig. The MULTICAST value appears in mine as well. Keep in mind that I am behind a router, and use NAT, but all of the other setting should be relevant.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:D0:09:ED:61:61
inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:529 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:511 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:315141 (307.7 Kb) TX bytes:47976 (46.8 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xdc00

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:800 (800.0 b) TX bytes:800 (800.0 b)

Don't know if this helps, but you can at least use it as another example of a working eth0

slight

I appreciate your responses. I am getting a crash course in putting together a Linux system from the ground up; as opposed to having a nice, comfy, pre-existing environment in which to work. It is my recent understanding that 'dhcpcd.rc.config' is a file that I need to edit in order for my eth0 to be somewhat relevant in connecting through a cable modem. I have found this file on other machines which are running kernel 2.4.16. My machine is running kernel 2.4.19, and I can't seem to find this particular file anywhere on it. What is the equivalent to '/etc/rc.config.d' in SuSE 8.1 kernel 2.4.19?