This is also probably covered in one or more FAQ's, so please feel free to redirect me to those as appropriate.

I need to set up a Linux bastion host to (A) firewall, (B) NAT/DHCP serve an XP client, (C) SMB connect to the XP client's file system, and (D) serve FTP for when I can't NAT through to use MSRDP on my XP box.

It would be nice if I could set up all of this through an SSH tunnel, but I really honestly know NOTHING of SSH and wouldn't know where to begin or how to configure it without leaving huge, gaping, horrible security holes. Actually I know very little about how NAT's work either -- my TCP/IP knowledge got as far as understanding routing before I changed jobs. And AFAIK, NAT's work very differently from standard routers...

Anyway, I'd appreciate comments, recommendations on versions and flavors of software to run, anything you guys want to throw at me (except for flames about just using Linux to provide net security for XP :)

TIA!

-- Tom

[Edit: btw, I know that running some of these additional services on the Linux box will be sort of anti-security in the purest sense, but I'm just trying to keep out the casual hackers/script kiddiez, not the NSA...]

(a) and (b) http://monmotha.mplug.org/firewall/index.php

(c) google and http://www.samba.org

(d) I like ProFTPd and VSFTPd as FTP servers, personally, but you can take your pick (as long as that pick isn't wu-ftpd)

As far as tunnelling it all through ssh, I have no clue about that. You can just use sftp if you want to tunnel ftp through ssh. As far as the firewall and NAT stuff, that script found above (answering (a) and (b)) helps take care of that pretty well.