could i have a firewall up and not know it?
 

I'm running mandrake 9.1. I've got 4 machines and have given each one a static IP address 192.168.1.2 - .3 - .4 - .5. I want to network them together with .2 being an NFS file server. I put all 4 addresses in the hosts file of each machine and exported the file systems from 192.168.1.2. I started the nfs process as the book I have suggests.

At this point I can ping from .2 to all the other 3 machines. They can ping each other, but none of the machines can ping 192.168.1.2 (the NFS file server.) Could I have set up some kind of firewall up around 192.168.1.2 and not realize it? If it's a possibility, how do I check and see if a firewall is up and how do I get it down?

Thanks in advance

Also, my plan is to mount the file system on the three other machines so they can get to galeon and then onto the Internet thru 192.168.1.2, as I only have one line coming into my classroom from the schools router. I tried using my own router to get all four on the net, but it did not work.

The most likely candidate in such a recent
distro would be iptables. To see whether you
have any kind of packet filtering active do:

iptables -L

as root.

If your output differs from this
you're likely to be firewalled :)

Cheers,
Tink

Mandrake comes with Shorewall, but you have to start it up. Go into Configuration - Configure Your Computer - Security - DrakFirewall.

When you choose a setting MD will ask for the disk.

If you have done all this and forgotten about it you should be able to undo your settings here.

Thanks for the advice, I'll check tomorrow AM. Is there anything else that might cause the problem I have having