Hello,

I have following problem. I have two network cards, ethernet card and wireless network card. I try to do following setup on Mandriva linux.

SETUP:
So my wireless card just share that USB harddrive which is connected to the Wireless Router.
(here is that wireless router: h t t p: / / w w w.dlink.com/products/?pid=390 )

And my ethernet card is connected to the ADSL ROUTER (internet).

I tried to google but havent find anything exact information how to do this. Hope some one can give me some information where to start or even better, good instructions for n00bie

You just need to ensure that the IP address you get from your ADSL router is in a different subnet than the IP address you get from your wireless router (eg. if you get 192.168.1.2 from your ADSL router and 192.168.1.101 from your wireless router, that's the same subnet and you'll need to move one of the devices to the 192.168.2.0 subnet) Apart from that, plug it all in and it should work.

Note: You won't get internet access from the wireless router using this setup.

What exactly is the problem you are having? Are the cards being recognized? Or are they not operating the way you want them to?

I ran into some quirky problems when I put a second ethernet card in my PC, so I can probably give you some pointers, I just need some more info. Maybe post the results of /sbin/lspci (to see if the cards are being recognized) and /sbin/ifconfig (to see if thier network settings are configured properly).

Thank you for helping me.

Thats was mine point, no internet connection from wireless router.

You're right, I dont have yet any problem cause I just ordered my wlan card (linux compatible) and wlan router. I dont have any experience about two network cards systems, so I start to looking for information before I start configure that network. Im happy that I dont have to bridge those connections together or am I wrong?

The biggest pain is going to be finding the correct drivers, but most modern NICs have Linux drivers floating around somewhere (I managed to find a working driver for an $8 generic ethernet card I got from a bargain bin at a local shop, so you should be ok). Also, with my particular setup, I had to recompile my kernel with the driver for one ethernet card built into the kernel, and have the other ethernet card rely on a module driver. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for this, but thats the only way it worked for me, and it has worked flawlessly since.

With Slackware, there is a script located in the /etc/rc.d directory called rc.ip_forward. What this does is simply forward all packets between the two cards, so each shares the internet connection despite being on different subnets. I'm not positive, but I'm willing to bet Mandriva has something similar for a dual-ethernet setup. Maybe consult their documentation or forums?

As far as setting up the wireless router, you'll have to check out the manual to see exactly how it is configured. While they are all generally the same, there tend to be minor differences from router to router. I also recently put in a wireless connection at my home which is already behind our main router (the one with the direct internet connection), and this wireless router also acts as a gateway for my dual-ethernet machine and laptop. It takes a little playing around with, but you'll figure it out. If you have any problems once you get the hardware, post it here and I'll see if I can help you out.