I have 4 computers networked, 3 are windows boxes, and 1 is a linux Mandriva 2007 box.

one of the windows box is a DNS, DHCP server and all computers get their ip address, dns and gateway (dsl/router) from this windows box (even the linux box with not problems at all).

all computers connect fine to the internet through the router, there is not ics computer in the network.

the linux box can ping any of the 3 windows boxes by name or ip address with not problems.

But the windows boxes cannot ping the linux box, none of them.

Any suggestions:

I have done tracert from the windows boxes with not success.

The mandriva2007 box was installed recently so it has only the software that come from the DVD iso that I downloaded.

check your firewall... by default mandrival 20007 has shorewall installed and by default PINGing is not allowed.

I'm trying to narrow down this problem, how do I disable this shorewall firewall if by any chance is running in mandriva2007, so far I don't see any menu that guide me to it.

Also I have samba server installed, I'm reading the smb.conf file to see if there is anyting there that prevent the windows boxes from pinging this linux box. so far not luck. what I'm intending for the time being is stopping both: the shorewall and samba services and see if I can get a ping. but I'm kinda of newbie on linux and I can not figure out yet how to stop these services.

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P.S

I found how to disable the shorewall and samba services, and somehow I still have the same problem, not ping to linux box from windows machines.

I am using vmware virtual machine to boot linux, so I booted another vmware machine I have with linux enterprise suse 10.0 and this machine works fine, so I haven't been able to figure it out yet why this mandriva box has this sort of problem.