Hello,
I set my slackware box up for a router, to provide internet and NAT for my new windows box.
But windows reports disconnected cable. No lights on the cards
either.
Slackside, setup my iptables rulesets, enabled ip forwarding in the kernel, and ifconfiged eth1 an ip address.

Windows side, I set up static ip, netmask, etc, but cannot connect.
Ifconfig on the router reports the ip, mac, broadcast and mask, so I
know the card works.

Any ideas?

Can the windows machine ping the Linux machine. The link light being dark sounds like a connectivity problem. Do you have them connected directly? If so, are you using a cross-over cable?

Cross over cable?
It's a plain ethernet cable, from the onboard card on windows to eth1 on slack. I've tried a couple. Same as would connect either computer to the modem or a store bought linksys and work just fine.

Can't ping, an ipconfig on windows returns no network. Like I said, no lights, no connectivity.

Oh. Just looked up cross over cable on wikipedia, I think that's my entire issue. Could I just cut and splice, reversing the wires?
What about putting a switch between them? Will check into it in the morning.

Thanks,
Ryan

Just buy a cross over cable or use a switch. Not all of the cables get switched. Just the pairs.

If this is a long cable, you can get a female-female ethernet block (extender) and plug a short cross over cable on the end.

I know not all of them get switched, but I doubt connectivity of spliced wires so I had a flash of intelligence and put a switch between them with the Linux box as upstream of course. They could then talk, but no internet on windows xp.
Here's the weird part. A couple updates came through with my not screwing with updates yet, just trying to get the damned thing connected,
but no internet per say. I thought since the patches came through, it was a dns problem and tried looking up google by their ip. No luck.
No connectivity past eth1 on the slack box.

I could talk to linux through eth1 but not past there.
I believe it is because I failed to load kernel module ipt_MASQUERADE.
But the capabilities of this module may already be built into the kernel because I used the HUGE.S upon installing, so I'm not sure if that's the prob.
I used a standard iptables ruleset, set the flag in the kernel, and after trying my ISP provided DNS servers with windows, I installed dnsmasq and configured it dns only without DHCP.
Still no workee.
I'm going to re-set up everything again in the morning and see if the unloaded kernel module (which I thought was built in) was the problem.
p.s. This is Slack 12.1 with the huge.s kernel and modules.

You need to configure both masquerading and a dhcp server. There is a masquerading HOWTO on the www.tldp.org website. There may be other modules needed such as nf_conntrack. Also you need to enable ip_forward and configure your firewall. The howto will tell you how. It would be best to configure the proper config file or script so that it is done when you boot up automatically.

If you already have a DHCP router that you connect to on the Linux box, then you just need to have the windows box on a different subnet and configure a route for that subnet. You also need to configure your Linux box's IP address (that the Windows box sees) as the Window's default gateway.

I once used my Laptop for a wireless connection for my desktop. I configured the Desktop (and printer) on the 192.168.1.128/255.255.255.128 subnet, entered route to this subnet, enabled ip_forward. It still didn't work until I modprobed the ip_conntrack module (now called nf_conntrack using my present kernel)

Good Luck!

Thanks. I have put a hardware router up and got stuck playin Sim City, But I am a roofer
who works from 6:00 am to darkm so I allow myself these occasional extravagances.
This issue will probably come back off the shelf this weekend.
Ryan

But noSir. Dhcp I have already learned is a useless security
issue once behind the router. I will flip this deal static or I will motherfucking go play sommore Sim City. It's the way I roll yo.