hi guys, i'm completely new to this. i'm running mandrake 8.1 on an old system i want to experiment with. and i am running windows xp (don't curse me) on this machine. so what is the procedure to set up my linux as a gateway?

basically my idea is to have a net connection on my linux machine as well as my windows machine, and my windows machine to have full internet functionality (games, morpheus etc). basically a direct port map (i just dunno how to do it)

is there any thing i need to set up on my windows machine as well?

now my linux machine is at the internet and network config screen (it's a brand new install, i just left the system there at that page of the wizard) so what do i do?

I don't use Mandrake, so I can't tell you the exact answers. Conceptually though, here is what you need to do:

- Put 2 NIC's in the Linux box
- 1 NIC should be configured to connect to your ISP (external)
- 1 NIC should be configured with a private address (internal)
(192.168.x.x, 172.16.x.x, or 10.x.x.x)
- Enable IP Masquerading and NAT (search for HOWTO's, check http://www.linuxquestion.org)
- set the Default Gateway on the Windows machine to the internal interface on the Linux box

Another variation would be to setup an internal DHCP server so you don't have to manually configure any machines you plug in to your internal network.

That should get you up and running if you can figure it all out!

Ryan

hopefully i won't regret continually recommending this program at some point in the future... but i suggest you get firestarter to sort out all the IP masq gunk for you, and also to give you a nice firewall while you're at it. just search google for it. That is IF you don't want to set your iptables by hand.