I am a newbie using RH7.1 on a 486/100, 36MB RAM, no X running, minimal install, and two Intel NICs using eepro module. Ultimately, I want this box to firewall and Masq IPs to two boxes(Win98 and an RH7.1) from the cable modem.
Question #1: When I reboot, the routing table changes and I don't know how to change it permanently.
Question #2: The hardware in 'ifconfig' lists 'eth0' and 'eth1' as the same hardware. Is this bad? 'ifconfig' is:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:AA:00:BF:2A:8E
inet addr:24.176.43.164 Bcast:24.176.43.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x210

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:AA:00:BF:2A:8E
inet addr:10.0.0.5 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x210

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:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

The routing table is:
'route -n'

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
10.0.0.5 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth1
24.176.43.164 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth0
24.176.43.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 24.176.43.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

I apologize for the formatting and lack of linux knowledge. I manually added the routes into the routing table. I don't want to use X on this little thing, if possible. Just getting this box to use the cable modem would suffice for now.
All the info online that I have found refers to older distros, outdated commands. Redhat's site was zero help. This seems to be the place to ask. Any help would be appreciated.

Strange. The first problem I can see is that either both your NICs have the same hardware address (MAC) or that one card is using both addresses.

Try this to see if they are sharing an interruptIf you're using MASQ transpartent proxy via ipchains/iptables, your routing setup may cause you some trouble. ipchains will handle the forwarding according to the rules you use and at best your routing will try to bypass these (bad IMHO)

I agree. I thought it was strange too. The cards are ISA. 'cat proc/interrupts' lists that IRQ 10 is eth0 and IRQ 11 is eth1, but 'cat /proc/ioports' lists only eth0 at 0210-021f and no listing for eth1. Shoud I list 'lilo.conf' and 'modules.conf'?

Yep - pls show the guts from modules.conf and rc.config. You can also try and load the modules manuallyYou can also try and reverse the order. You may also want to see if you can configure the cards themselves with either the dos utils for the cards or... (i forget the linux pkg for configuring ethernet cards!)

'cat modules.conf' gives:

alias eth0 eepro
alias eth1 eepro
options eepro io=0x210,0x300 irq=10,11
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc


'cat lilo.conf' gives:

boot=/dev/hda1
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
linear
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.2-2
label=linux
append = "ether=11,0x210,eth0 ether=10,0x300,eth1"
read-only
root=/dev/hda5

I ran softset2 from a dosdisk which gives:

etherexpress pro/10 addr 00 AA 00 BF 2A 8E i/o=210h-21Fh irq=11
etherexpress pro/10 addr 00 AA 00 59 1D AA i/o=300h-30Fh irq=10

'lsmod' gives:

Module Size Used by
eepro 13744 2 (autoclean)
ipchains 36128 0 (unused)

I couldn't find 'rc.config' in the linux filesystem and I think that I looked pretty hard, but I didn't know exactly where to look and 'man rc.config' gave nothing.
I am getting the feeling that I am passing the wrong arguments to the OS. I tried the 'modprobe eepro alias eth0' and 'modprobe eepro alias eth1', with and without the ifconfig showing eth0 and eth1 listed using 'ifconfig eth0 down' with both and viceversa. Again, I really appreciate your help.:-)