I have a windows XP home edition system routing the internet to a linux system using an 8 port lan switch, i have correctly set up the internet on the linux box as well as file sharing between the two systems but i wish to set up a web server on the linux system how would i be able to use it over my lan so that people on the web could access my site.

Hi, and welcome to LQ.

First of all, add a little punctuation next time, it makes it a lot easier to read.

... correctly according to which criteria?

1) Install a web server. Apache, anyone?
2) Take precautions for going on the net (*)
3) Give the box a public IP or in other ways route traffic to it (**).
4) (optional) give it a dns entry; see http://www.dyndns.org

(*) adding the following two lines to /etc/hosts.deny might be enough:
(**)
To show which address each interface is bound to.

hth --Jonas

hi thanks for the reply,

1 - i have installed the apache webserver.
2 - i have set up firewall software and done the tip's you provided.
3 - i do not know how to give the box a public ip or rout trafic to it when i used the command you suggested i got my ip info:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 brd 127.255.255.255 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:01:80:54:4e:50 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.2.2.2/24 brd 10.2.2.255 scope global eth0
inet6 fe80::201:80ff:fe54:4e50/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: sit0: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noqueue
link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0

4 - i have a dynamic dns from Dns2go

i believe i just need to rout the incoming http requests to the linux box, i just don't know how to do that.
I upgraded to suse linux 9.2 professional this evening if that's any help to you.

Thanks
James

sorry forgot to mention by 'I have correctly set up internet on the linux box' i meant that i can access the internet over the lan on the linux box.

I wouldn't know anything about windows (wrt your problem) or your networking hardware--which I figure out to be responsible for forwarding packets.

Sorry I can't help --Jonas