I am a linux newbie an learning to set up a home network starting with two computers with a X'over cable (before buying wireless and connecting two other MSWIN PC,s. )

So far both machines ping each other and Samba set up on my Internet gateway machine can be seen by both machines. Can't get it to reveal my home drive though and can't get it to print. (I assume these are samba configuartion and folder permission issues, nether of which I have much of a clue about.

Internet Gateway works with ISP connection OK, and I have switched on packet forwarding (I hope!) But I can't ping any external site from the client PC, with or without either machine's firewall switched on.

NFS did nothing at all when configured on the gateway computer when trying to access from the client computer.

I have been doing this with "Redhat Linux 9 for Dummies" in one hand and following it as best I can.

What can I do/check now to get both machines to speak to each other? I assume its configuration as Samba woks a bit and ping does to.

many thanks

Graham

Your post was a little confusing about your setup, but I will take a shot at responding anyway.

I am understanding you to say that your two local boxes can ping each other, and that your gateway box can connect to your ISP and ping the world, but your non-gateway box can't ping the outside world (via your gateway box). If this is correct, then your gateway box does not appear to be forwarding requests from/to your non-gateway box.

All the talk about Samba, nfs, rsh, etc. is unrelated to this basic issue of configuring your gatway box to act as a gateway.

On a side note, it is generally a good practice to avoid turning on extra services like Samba, nfs, rsh, etc. on any box that is facing the outside world. Having an unexpected intruder working on your system just adds complexity to your efforts to configure it.

Thanks for your help. I greatly appreciate it.

I] [/I]

Your description above of what I was trying to explain is accurate. The process I followed to set up forwarding of requests was:
gedit /etc/sysctrl.conf
and changed the following line:
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
to:
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

But I don't know how to test if IP forwarding is in fact active, (as opposed to just changing the config file and restarting network services)
How do you do this?

The reason I started Samba at all was that coming from a windows environment I was expecting to "see" the other computer somewhere when they were connected. Of course Linux doesn't seem to do this, until I started Samba, which at least showed me an icon of the gateway machine and vice versa confirming that they could speak to each other beyond simply pinging.

When I come to actually wanting to share drives printers etc on this little home network is it more secure to use a non internet gateway box as the nfs or samba server?

gc

I don't have much direct experience setting Linux up as a router, but here is a link to Linux IP Masquerade HOWTO that covers the subject:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...ade-HOWTO.html

With regards to your question about using a noninternet gateway box as your Samba server, absolutely yes - every service that is being run on the gateway box is a possible route into your home network. A good solution is to get an old (cheap) 486 or early Pentium and install two network cards, or a modem an a network card, and then dedicate it to being your internet gateway. Here is a link to a page that provides some precanned distros for setting this up:
http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/

Thanks idaho.

I tried to understand the stuff on masquerading - I just don't . For some reason its like maths when I was young, a big mental block. I just don't think like that. Thats why I glossed over it in Redhat 9 for Dummies. But I can now see that seems to be where the problem is. I just wish there was a gnome configuration screen which made it easy. I'll read the material you suggest again...and again...!! and see if I can get it working, but at least you have identified my problem.
Oh well......

Many thanks for your help

That is where the precanned distros mentioned in the link I provided come in handy. They have this stuff all sugar coated so you don't have to thoroughly understand it to use it.